Facebook vaults into the $1 trillion valuation club

The dismissal of an antitrust lawsuit on Monday helped to put Facebook Inc. into the $1 trillion club, achieving a market valuation that only four other companies have hit on U.S. stock exchanges.

The Menlo Park social media giant’s stock jumped more than 4% after a judge tossed an antitrust complaint brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of state attorneys general. Its shares dropped slightly in early trading on Tuesday but its market cap remained at $1 trillion.

Facebook’s stock has soared by about 30% so far in 2020 and is up by about 57% in the past 12 months.

When the company went public in May 2012, it began with a market cap of $104 billion.

Nearly all of company’s revenue is from advertising done on Facebook and Instagram. It also gets some from hardware products that include Oculus virtual-reality headsets.

All of the other four trillion-dollar companies on U.S. exchanges are from the tech sector:

• Apple Inc., $2.26 trillion: Shares of the Cupertino-based maker of iPhones and other devices (Nasdaq:AAPL) are up just 2% in 2020 but it remains the most valuable company in the world. Its shares have gone up nearly 50% in the past 12 months.
• Microsoft Corp.,$2.03 trillion: The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant’s stock (Nasdaq:MSFT) has jumped by 21% this year, helping it to close in on Apple. It is up by about 36% in the past 12 months.
• Amazon.com Inc., $1.73 trillion: Jeff Bezos’ Seattle-based online retail giant’s stock (Nasdaq:AMZN) is up by just 5.5% halfway through the year. Its value has gone up by about 28% in the past year.
• Alphabet Inc., $1.67 trillion: Shares of Google’s Mountain View-based parent company have jumped by 39% this year, putting it very close to overtaking Amazon. Its 74% jump in value over the past year is the biggest among the U.S. trillion-dollar club companies.

The only other company in the world with a valuation of $1 trillion is also the world’s most valuable business — oil giant Saudi Aramco, which is valued at more than $7 trillion. It trades on the Saudi stock exchange Tadawul.