Big Tech had a big year in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic did not stop the seven biggest tech companies from growing in value by $3.4 trillion in total last year.
Tech giants like Amazon and Apple posted record revenues in recent months, with both companies topping $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the final quarter of 2020.
In fact, in Amazon’s case, the e-commerce behemoth pulled in more than $830,000 in revenue per minute in its most recent quarter.
CNBC Make It looked at the most recent quarterly earnings reports that seven of the biggest brands in tech (Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla and Netflix) filed with the SEC in recent weeks, and broke down how much revenue they each made for every minute of the first three months of 2021. (There were 90 days, and 129,600 minutes, in the first quarter of 2021.)
- Amazon: $837,330.25 revenue per minute in 2021′s first quarter
- Apple: $691,234.57 per minute
- Alphabet: $426,805.56 per minute
- Microsoft: $321,805.56 per minute
- Facebook: $201,936.73 per minute
- Tesla: $80,162.04 per minute
- Netflix: $55,270.06 per minute
The companies brought in an average of $373,606 per minute, which is actually less than the same seven companies averaged in the previous quarter ($416,768 in revenue per minute, as business data website Visual Capitalist pointed out in a March graphic). Both Apple and Amazon posted record revenues in their final quarters of 2020, helping to boost the overall average, with Amazon pulling in over $950,000 in revenue per minute in that quarter.
In 2021′s first quarter, Amazon led the pack by pulling in more than $108.5 billion in revenue. That breaks down to $837,330 per minute during that three-month period.
Amazon topped $100 billion in revenue for the second quarter in a row. Amazon is coming off a blockbuster year, as the pandemic forced people to do even more of their shopping online. Founder Jeff Bezos (who announced he’s stepping down as Amazon CEO during the company’s last quarterly earnings reveal) has even seen his personal net worth top $200 billion.
Apple followed Amazon in the breakdown of revenue-per-minute, pulling in $691,234 every minute of the first quarter of 2021. The company posted revenue of $89.6 billion for that quarter, with iPhone sales that grew by 65.5% from the same period a year earlier.
Apple also has the largest market value of any company in the world, at more than $2.2 trillion, as of Friday. Amazon has a market value of $1.76 trillion.
Meanwhile, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which has a market value of about $1.6 trillion, pulled in $426,805 per minute, based on its most recent quarterly results. The company reported total revenue of $55.3 billion for the first quarter of 2021. Microsoft, with a market cap of $1.9 trillion, reported $41.7 billion in quarterly revenue this past week, which broke down to $321,805 in revenue per minute.
Facebook ($925 billion market value) pulled in $201,936 of revenue per minute and $26.2 billion in total revenue for the first quarter of the year. Tesla ($677 billion market value) was next on the list with $80,162 in revenue per minute, based on a quarterly revenue haul of $10.4 billion.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk temporarily overtook Bezos for the title of the world’s wealthiest person in January, after a very successful 2020 saw the electric automaker’s stock price soar as the company finally posted consistent quarterly profits. Musk currently has a net worth of $175 billion, second to Bezos’ $202 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Finally, Netflix (with a market cap of $227 billion) came off a year of record revenues in 2020, but the streaming giant saw subscriber growth slow down in the first quarter of 2021. Still, Netflix pulled in $7.2 billion in the year’s final quarter, which broke down to $55,270 in revenue per minute.
