Pretty much just this question. Why does Shell have a low stock price compared to Apple despite having more revenue?
In: Economics
First off share, price is a matter of market cap (total value of company) divided by number of shares. So two companies with identical market cap can have vastly different share prices based on how many shares they have outstanding. There is no set number companies issue at their IPO, and then they can do stock splits, buy back shares, have secondary offerings, etc. that all change the number of shares they have over time. Amazon could do a 100:1 split tomorrow and have a share price of $32 but it would change nothing of the operations or value of the company.
And share price valuations are typically based on profitability/expected future profitability. Oil companies may have higher revenue, but they also have much greater expenses. As a result, extracting and selling oil has lower profit margins most of the time (that changes when oil prices skyrocket, as the costs to locate, extract, ship, refine, etc. don’t vary much compared to the volatility of oil prices). And the writing is on the the wall for oil producers, as renewable energy sources take off, the rise of electric cars, etc. suggest that oil companies are not in a high growth industry.
Tech companies typically have much higher profit margins because it’s easier to scale software or web services than oil production. And tech companies are still innovating, growing new product segments, seeing continued high growth in existing markets, that suggest growth in profitability in the future.
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