IBM Valuation Multiples

Apple is among the largest companies in the world, with a broad portfolio of hardware and software products targeted at consumers and businesses. Apple’s iPhone makes up a majority of the firm sales, and Apple’s other products like Mac, iPad, and Watch are designed around the iPhone as the focal point of an expansive software ecosystem. Apple has progressively worked to add new applications, like streaming video, subscription bundles, and augmented reality. The firm designs its own software and semiconductors while working with subcontractors like Foxconn and TSMC to build its products and chips. Slightly less than half of Apple’s sales come directly through its flagship stores, with a majority of sales coming indirectly through partnerships and distribution.

Microsoft sells productivity, security, business, and developer software alongside Azure cloud infrastructure and platform services. Commercial customers pay through subscriptions, software licenses, and usage charges. Consumer businesses include Windows, Xbox, and advertising. Beginning in fiscal 2027, Microsoft reports two segments: agents and infra, containing its commercial software and cloud businesses, and devices and consumer.

Alphabet is a holding company that wholly owns internet giant Google. The California-based company derives slightly more than three-fourths of its revenue from Google services, the vast majority of which is advertising sales. Alongside online ads, Google services houses sales stemming from Google’s subscription services (YouTube TV and YouTube Music, among others), platforms (sales and in-app purchases on Play Store), and devices (Chromebooks, Pixel smartphones, and smart home products such as Chromecast). Google’s cloud computing platform accounts for more than 20% of Alphabet’s revenue. The firm’s investments in up-and-coming technologies such as self-driving cars (Waymo) and health (Isomorphic) make up the rest.

Amazon.com operates an online marketplace, sells merchandise directly, and provides fulfillment and advertising services to merchants and brands. Prime combines delivery benefits with digital content to encourage repeat purchases. Amazon Web Services supplies computing, storage, databases, and artificial intelligence services. The company reports North America, international, and AWS segments; advertising and subscriptions are included within the geographic segments. AWS accounts for roughly one-fifth of revenue and the majority of operating income.

Palantir is an artificial intelligence, analytics, and automated decision-making company that leverages data to drive efficiency across its clients' organizations. The firm serves commercial and government clients via its Foundry and Gotham platforms, respectively. Palantir works only with entities in Western-allied nations and reserves the right not to work with anyone that is antithetical to Western values. The company was founded in 2003 and went public in 2020.

Cisco Systems is a United States networking technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It develops and sells routers, switches, security products, collaboration systems and software used to connect and manage digital networks. The company serves enterprises, telecommunications providers, public-sector organizations and smaller businesses worldwide. Revenue comes from hardware product sales, software subscriptions, licensing and technical support services. Cisco agreed to acquire CAIS Software Solutions and its IPORT technology in 2000 to strengthen products for property-based broadband access. The company is publicly listed and operates globally through direct sales and partner channels, with products spanning campus, data-center, wide-area and Internet infrastructure.

Oracle is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas, having moved its head office from Redwood Shores, California, in December 2020. It was co-founded on June 16, 1977, in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates as Software Development Laboratories, and took its name from its flagship Oracle Database. Oracle sells database software, enterprise applications including enterprise resource planning, human capital management, customer experience and supply chain software, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and hardware to businesses and governments. It acquired Sun Microsystems and, in June 2022, Cerner for $28.3 billion, which now forms Oracle Health. In January 2025 Oracle joined OpenAI, SoftBank and MGX in the Stargate AI infrastructure venture, and in September 2025 it signed a $300 billion contract with OpenAI for 4.5 gigawatts of capacity over five years. For the quarter ended November 2025 it reported revenue of $14.1 billion, with cloud infrastructure revenue up 68% to $4.1 billion and remaining performance obligations of $130 billion. It employed 141,000 full-time staff in May 2026, and Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia succeeded Safra Catz as co-CEOs, with Ellison as chairman and chief technology officer.

Founded in Germany in 1972 by former IBM employees, SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software. Known as the leader in enterprise resource planning software, SAP’s portfolio also includes software for supply chain management, procurement, travel and expense management, and customer relationship management, among others. The company operates in more than 180 countries and has more than 400,000 customers, approximately 80% of which are small to medium-size enterprises.

Palo Alto Networks is a platform-based cybersecurity vendor with product offerings covering network security, cloud security, and security operations. The California-based firm has more than 80,000 enterprise customers across the world, including more than three fourths of the Global 2000.

Alibaba Group is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, founded on 28 June 1999 by Jack Ma and 17 friends and students as the business-to-business marketplace Alibaba.com. It operates China's largest consumer marketplaces, Taobao (consumer-to-consumer) and Tmall (business-to-consumer), the global B2B site Alibaba.com and domestic wholesale platform 1688, alongside international e-commerce, Alibaba Cloud, the Cainiao logistics network, local consumer services and digital media and entertainment businesses, reorganised in 2023 into six business groups. It earns revenue mainly from merchant advertising and commissions on its marketplaces, plus cloud computing, logistics and direct sales. Early backers included Goldman Sachs, SoftBank and Investor AB, which invested $25 million in October 1999. Its September 2014 New York Stock Exchange IPO raised $25 billion, then the largest in history, giving it a market value of $231 billion, and in January 2018 it became the second Asian company to pass a $500 billion valuation. Joseph Tsai became chairman and Eddie Wu chief executive in 2023.

CrowdStrike is a cloud-native cybersecurity company specializing in security verticals such as endpoint, cloud workload, identity, and security operations. CrowdStrike's primary offering is its Falcon platform, which provides enterprises with a unified view to detect and respond to security threats across their IT infrastructure. The Austin, Texas-based firm was founded in 2011 and went public in 2019.

Dell Technologies is a broad information technology vendor, primarily supplying hardware to enterprises. It focuses on premium and commercial personal computers, as well as enterprise on-premises data center hardware. It holds top-three shares in its core markets of personal computers, peripheral displays, mainstream servers, and external storage. Dell has a robust ecosystem of component and assembly partners and also relies heavily on channel partners to fulfill its sales.

KLA is one of the largest semiconductor wafer fabrication equipment, or WFE, manufacturers in the world. It specializes in the market segment of semiconductor process control, wherein machines inspect semiconductor wafers during research and development and manufacturing for defects and verify precise measurements. In this section of the market, KLA holds a majority share. It also has a small exposure to the etch and deposition segments of the WFE market. It counts as top customers the largest chipmakers in the world, including TSMC and Samsung.

Shopify is a Canadian commerce software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that provides the cloud platform more than 5 million merchants use to run online stores and physical retail. Its subscription plans let businesses build storefronts, manage products, orders and inventory, and sell through point-of-sale systems, social networks and marketplaces, while merchant solutions add Shopify Payments, the Shop Pay accelerated checkout (more than 150 million users in 2024), shipping, merchant lending through Shopify Capital and an app store with more than 10,000 third-party apps. Revenue comes from monthly subscription fees and, increasingly, from payment processing and other transaction-linked services. Merchants processed US$292.3 billion of transactions on the platform in 2024, and 2025 revenue rose 30% to US$11.6 billion with net income of US$1.23 billion; the company had about 7,600 employees in 2025. Shopify was started by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake, and Lütke remains chief executive. It went public on May 21, 2015, trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, moved its US listing from the NYSE to Nasdaq on March 31, 2025, and joined the Nasdaq-100 that May.

Salesforce provides enterprise cloud computing solutions. The company offers customer relationship management technology that brings companies and customers together. Its Customer 360 platform helps the group deliver a single source of truth, connecting customer data across systems, apps, and devices to help companies sell, service, market, and conduct commerce. It also offers Service Cloud for customer support, Marketing Cloud for digital marketing campaigns, Commerce Cloud as an e-commerce engine, the Salesforce Platform, which allows enterprises to build applications, and other solutions, such as MuleSoft for data integration.

Accenture is a professional services company that provides management consulting, technology consulting, systems integration and outsourcing services to corporations and governments. It was formed in 1989 as the consulting arm of Arthur Andersen, operated as Andersen Consulting until 2000, and is incorporated in Ireland with its head office in Dublin. The company organises its work around strategy and consulting, technology and operations services, and industry-specific practices spanning banking, insurance, health, public service, communications, energy, retail and software. It earns fees from multi-year managed services and outsourcing contracts as well as project-based consulting and implementation work for large enterprise clients. Accenture is a serial acquirer of small and mid-sized specialist firms in cloud, data and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital engineering, marketing and design, and it adds capability in new geographies the same way. It also invests in early-stage and growth technology companies through its corporate venture arm, Accenture Ventures, and holds majority and minority stakes in joint ventures such as Avanade. Its shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

S&P Global provides data and benchmarks to capital and commodity market participants. Its ratings business is the largest credit rating agency in the world and S&P's largest segment by profitability. S&P's largest segment by revenue is market intelligence, which provides desktop, data and advisory solutions, enterprise solutions, and credit/risk solutions mostly in the financial-services industry. S&P's other segments include energy (formerly commodity insights, this segment includes Platts and other data), mobility (Carfax), and indexes. S&P plans to spin off mobility in 2026.

Hitachi Ltd is engaged in diverse businesses spanning industries, energy, IT, and real estate. The company operates through four business segments. The Connective Industries segment covers elevators, escalators, home appliances, air conditioning, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, medical analyzers, industrial and distribution solutions, water and environmental solutions, and industrial equipment. The Digital Systems & Services segment offers system integration, consulting, cloud services, IT products, software, and ATMs. The Green Energy & Mobility segment focuses on power grids, renewable energy, nuclear power, and railway systems. The Others include real estate management, sales, and leasing. It generates the majority of its revenue from the Green Energy & Mobility segment.

Founded in 1954 and headquartered in Tokyo, Advantest specializes in semiconductor test systems and is a well-known leader in automated test equipment, or ATE. Advantest also has a high market share in test systems for nonmemory semiconductors, including application processors for mobile phones. The company is also involved in peripheral businesses, such as semiconductor device transport equipment. Following its acquisition of Verigy in July 2011, Advantest holds a market share of over 60% in the ATE market.

AppLovin is a vertically integrated advertising technology company that serves as a demand-side platform for advertisers, a supply-side platform for publishers, and an exchange that facilitates transactions between the two. About 80% of AppLovin’s revenue comes from the DSP, AppDiscovery, while the remainder comes from the SSP, Max. AppLovin’s primary tool for future growth is Axon 2, an ad optimizer within the DSP that lets advertisers place ads based on specified return thresholds.

Tokyo Electron is the fourth-largest wafer fabrication equipment provider globally by revenue, with a market share of 10% as of 2025. Founded in 1963, the company primarily manufactures etching, deposition, coaters and developers, as well as wafer cleaning equipment used in front-end semiconductor manufacturing. Tokyo Electron’s key customers include global semiconductor leaders in foundry and memory, such as TSMC, Intel, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The company mainly manufactures its products across its factories in Yamanashi, Kumamoto, and Miyagi, Japan.

Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd is engaged in the design, research and development, manufacturing, and sales of various electronic equipment products. The company's main products include communications network equipment, cloud service equipment, precision tools, and industrial robots.

Mitsubishi Corp. is Japan’s largest general trading house, or sogo shosha, a type of conglomerate unique to Japan. Its core role is that of a trading intermediary in a variety of industrial sectors, including resources businesses like energy and metals as well as nonresources businesses, both industrial ones like automotive and nonindustrial ones like food, healthcare, and retail. In addition to acting as a trading intermediary (including midstream processing functions to convert inputs into final products), Mitsubishi participates in upstream production businesses and downstream distribution businesses.

Cloudflare is a software company based in San Francisco, California, that offers security and web performance offerings by utilizing a distributed, serverless content delivery network, or CDN. The firm’s edge computing platform, Workers, leverages this network by providing clients the ability to deploy and execute code without maintaining servers.

Founded in 2012, Snowflake is a fully managed platform that consolidates data hosted on different public clouds for centralized analytics and governance. Snowflake’s cloud-native architecture allows users to independently scale the compute and storage layers, providing customers with optimized performance at lower costs. The company’s data lake and data warehouse products support a variety of use cases, including business analytics, data engineering, and artificial intelligence. Snowflake is widely used by Fortune 2000 companies in financial services, media, and retail sectors.

Hon Hai Precision is the world's largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics, communications, and computer products. It is the biggest supplier to Apple, whose business accounted for around 50% of overall revenue in 2025. Hon Hai is also involved in the production of upstream components such as electronic connectors, semiconductor packaging, and metal casings for smartphones, as well as producing servers. These upstream activities are mainly conducted through its listed majority-owned subsidiaries Foxconn Industrial Internet and FIH Mobile. In response to its traditional end markets of computers, smartphones, and telecom equipment maturing in 2019 it started on a strategy to develop expertise in three new growth areas—electric vehicles, digital health, and robotics.

ServiceNow Inc provides software solutions to structure and automate various business processes via a SaaS delivery model. The company primarily focuses on the IT function for enterprise customers. ServiceNow began with IT service management, expanded within the IT function, and more recently directed its workflow automation logic to functional areas beyond IT, notably customer service, HR service delivery, and security operations. ServiceNow also offers an application development platform as a service.

Tata Consultancy Services is a leading global IT services provider based in Mumbai, India. Founded in 1968, it is one of the first companies to leverage a global delivery model that helps clients outsource their IT needs to offshore labor. The company boasts a wide range of offerings, including IT consulting, managed services, and business process outsourcing.

Adobe provides content creation, document management, and digital marketing and advertising software and services to creative professionals and marketers for creating, managing, delivering, measuring, optimizing, and engaging with compelling content multiple operating systems, devices, and media. The company operates with three segments: digital media content creation, digital experience for marketing solutions, and publishing for legacy products (less than 5% of revenue).

Cadence Design Systems is a provider of electronic design automation software, intellectual property, and system design and analysis products. EDA software automates and aids in the chip design process, enhancing design accuracy, productivity, and complexity in a full-flow end-to-end solution. Cadence offers a portfolio of design IP, as well as system design and analysis products, which enables system-level analysis and verification solutions.

Intuit serves small and midsize businesses with accounting software QuickBooks and online marketing platform Mailchimp. The company also operates retail tax filing tool TurboTax, personal finance platform Credit Karma, and a suite of professional tax offerings for accountants. Founded in the mid-1980s, Intuit enjoys a dominant market share for small-to-midsize business accounting and self-serve tax filing in the US.

Fortinet is a platform-based cybersecurity vendor with product offerings covering network security, cloud security, zero-trust access, and security operations. The firm derives a majority of its revenue through sales of its subscriptions and support-based business. The California-based firm has more than 800,000 customers across the world.

Synopsys is a technology company supplying engineering software and semiconductor intellectual property to companies designing chips and electronic systems. Its electronic design automation tools support the design, verification and implementation of integrated circuits. The company also provides reusable semiconductor IP, including interface, analog, embedded memory and other functional building blocks that customers incorporate into their own chips. Its customers are commercial engineering and product-development organisations across semiconductor and other technology markets. Revenue comes from licensing software and intellectual property and providing associated support, training and engineering services. Its portfolio also includes simulation and analysis technologies used to assess engineering designs and system behaviour. The business combines internally developed technologies with acquired capabilities, including the embedded memory and logic library portfolio obtained through its acquisition of Virage Logic in 2010.

Moody’s, along with S&P Ratings, is a leading provider of credit ratings on fixed-income securities. The ratings segment, Moody’s Investors Service, includes corporates, structured finance, financial institutions, and public finance ratings. MIS represents a majority of the firm’s profit and often (depending on bond issuance levels) a majority of the firm's revenue. The other segment, Moody’s Analytics, consists of decision solutions, research and insights, and data and information.

Vertiv has roots tracing back to 1946 when its founder, Ralph Liebert, developed an air-cooling system for mainframe data rooms. As computers started making their way into commercial applications in 1965, Liebert developed one of the first computer room air conditioning, or CRAC, units, enabling the precise control of temperature and humidity. The firm has slowly expanded its data center portfolio through internal product development and the acquisition of thermal and power management products like condensers, busways, and switches. Vertiv has global operations today; its products can be found in data centers in most regions throughout the world.

RELX is a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers in various industries. The company serves sectors such as science and medical research, risk management, and legal. In addition, RELX organizes large-scale digital and face-to-face events such as industry trade shows. Around 60% of revenue is generated in North America and about 20% in Europe.

Datadog is a cloud-native company that focuses on analyzing machine data. The firm's product portfolio, delivered via software as a service, enables clients to monitor and analyze their entire information technology infrastructure, from servers to applications and Python scripts. Datadog's platform can ingest and analyze large amounts of machine-generated data in real time, allowing clients to utilize it for a variety of applications throughout their businesses to ensure uptime and latency objectives.

Mitsubishi Electric is a leading Japanese diversified industrial manufacturer, specializing in factory automation systems, power and energy systems, infrastructure solutions, automotive equipment, electronic devices, and home appliances. Founded in 1921 and headquartered in Tokyo, the company operates globally with a strong presence in Asia, Europe, and North America. Known for its technological expertise and high reliability, Mitsubishi Electric plays a vital role in sectors ranging from smart manufacturing and transportation to public utility, energy management and defense. The company emphasizes sustainability, innovation, and long-term growth through its focus on electrification, automation, and digitalization.

Murata Manufacturing produces passive components for electronic devices. Passive components are necessary for all electronic circuits, used to enable wireless communication, store electricity, handle electric flow, remove electromagnetic noise from circuits, and so on. Thus, passive components are imperative for electronic circuits. For instance, one high-end smartphone contains more than 1,000 passive components. Murata Manufacturing is the world's leading supplier of passive components, such as MLCC and SAW filters.

NAURA Technology Group Co Ltd engages in the research, development, manufacture, sale, and service of electronic equipment and components in the People's Republic of China. The company offers semiconductor equipment, including etching equipment, PVD and CVD equipment, oxidation/diffusion equipment, cleaning equipment, novel display equipment, gas mass flow controllers, etc., and vacuum heat treatment equipment and technical solutions for the semiconductors, photovoltaic equipment, vacuum electronic devices, magnetic materials, aerospace, and smart power grid sectors.

Idexx Laboratories primarily develops, manufactures, and distributes diagnostic products, equipment, and services for pets and livestock. Its key product lines include single-use canine and feline test kits that veterinarians can employ in the office, benchtop chemistry and hematology analyzers for test-panel analysis on-site, reference lab services, and tests to detect and manage disease in livestock. The firm also offers vet practice management software and consulting services to animal hospitals. Idexx derives roughly 35% of its revenue from outside the United States.

Founded in 1930 and transformed over the decades through the acquisition of dozens of esteemed brands, Ametek owns more than 40 autonomous industrial businesses operating across research, aerospace, energy, medical, and manufacturing. Ametek segments its business into two operating groups: the electronic instruments group and the electromechanical group. The EIG sells a broad portfolio of analytical, test, and measurement instruments, while the EMG sells highly engineered components, interconnects, and specialty metals. The company emphasizes product differentiation and market leadership in the niche markets it operates in.

Founded in 1982, Autodesk is a multinational software company best known for pioneering computer-aided design, or CAD, with its AutoCAD product. Nowadays, Autodesk provides design software for a variety of verticals, including architecture & construction, manufacturing, and media & entertainment. Autodesk products have been used in some of the world's most iconic landmarks, like Burj Khalifa, and well-known movie titles like Avatar.

Constellation Software is an acquirer, manager, and developer of vertical market software, or VMS, businesses globally. VMS differentiates from horizontal software in that it provides mission critical solutions within a specific industry for customers in a particular market. Constellation operates through a decentralized model in which each business operates as its own independent entity. Managers of individual businesses are incentivized to optimize their business for returns on invested capital and revenue growth. Excess cash generated by the individual businesses is repatriated to portfolio managers who focus on allocating as much capital as possible on new acquisitions. As of 2025, Constellation consisted of over 1,000 individual businesses and 64,000 employees.

Strategy Inc is a bitcoin treasury company and a provider of business intelligence services. It is designed to provide investors varying degrees of economic exposure to Bitcoin by offering a range of securities, including equity and fixed-income instruments. The company also provides industry AI-powered enterprise analytics software. It has one reportable operating segment: the Software Business, which is engaged in the design, development, marketing, and sales of the company's enterprise analytics software platform through cloud subscriptions and licensing arrangements and related services (i.e., product support, consulting, and education). Geographically, the company operates in EMEA, U.S. and Other Regions, of which maximum revenue is derived from U.S..

Infosys is an IT services provider based in Bengaluru, India, with offices in more than 50 countries. The company leverages its offshore outsourcing model to serve clients across different industries, such as financial services and manufacturing. Infosys’ IT services offerings include consulting, digital transformation, and business process outsourcing.

Keysight Technologies is a leader in the field of testing and measurement, helping electronics OEMs and suppliers alike bring products to market to fit industry standards and specifications. Keysight specializes in the communications market, but also supplies into the government, automotive, industrial, and semiconductor manufacturing markets. Keysight’s solutions include testing tools, analytical software, and services. The firm’s stated objective is to reduce time to market and improve efficiency at its more than 30,000 customers.

Veeva is the global leading supplier of cloud-based software solutions for the life sciences industry. The company’s best-of-breed offerings address operating and regulatory requirements for customers ranging from small, emerging biotechnology companies to departments of global pharmaceutical manufacturers. The company leverages its domain expertise to improve the efficiency and compliance of the underserved life sciences industry, displacing large, highly customized and dated enterprise resource planning systems that have limited flexibility. Its two main products are Veeva CRM, a customer relationship management platform for companies with a salesforce, and Veeva Vault, a content management platform that tackles various functions within any life sciences company.