Saudi Aramco Flirts With $2 Trillion Valuation

On its second day of trading on the Riyadh Tadawul exchange, the value of all Saudi Aramco stock briefly reached the $2 trillion mark and closed at $1.965 trillion Thursday. Comparing this market cap to those of other major companies in the world that day, Saudi Aramco was around $800 billion ahead of next biggest (publicly listed) companies Apple and Microsoft and more than $1 trillion ahead of Google parent company Alphabet as well as Amazon.

As part of its IPO, which started Wednesday, the company was valued at $1.5 to $1.7 trillion, lower than its owners would have preferred. The current valuation will provide some gratification to Saudi officials who were met with skepticism after claiming their company should be valued at $2 trillion or above. But with the IPO happening merely days ago, long term market cap is still subject to change and could level off at a different value.

The Saudi state oil company listed 1.5 percent of shares in an IPO that raised $25.6 billion Wednesday, making it the biggest IPO of all time. Compared to the world’s big tech companies, Saudi Aramco has only listed a very limited amount of its shares, floating 1.5 percent of company value. For comparison, Apple lists 88 percent while Amazon floats 84 percent.