Meridian Valuation Multiples

Nvidia is a leading developer of graphics processing units. Traditionally, GPUs were used to enhance the experience on computing platforms, most notably in gaming applications on PCs. GPU use cases have since emerged as important semiconductors used in artificial intelligence to run large language models. Nvidia not only offers AI GPUs, but also a software platform, Cuda, used for AI model development and training. Nvidia is also expanding its data center networking solutions, helping to tie GPUs together to handle complex workloads.

Alphabet is a holding company that wholly owns internet giant Google. The California-based company derives slightly less than 90% 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 roughly 10% of Alphabet’s revenue. The firm’s investments in up-and-coming technologies such as self-driving cars (Waymo), health (Verily), and internet access (Google Fiber) make up the rest.

Microsoft develops and licenses consumer and enterprise software. It is known for its Windows operating systems and Office productivity suite. The company is organized into three equally sized broad segments: productivity and business processes (legacy Microsoft Office, cloud-based Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, LinkedIn, Dynamics), intelligence cloud (infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service offerings Azure, Windows Server OS, SQL Server), and more personal computing (Windows Client, Xbox, Bing search, display advertising, and Surface laptops, tablets, and desktops).

Amazon is the leading online retailer and marketplace for third party sellers. Retail related revenue represents approximately 74% of total, followed by Amazon Web Services (17%), and advertising services (9%). International segments constitute 22% of Amazon's total revenue, led by Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

Meta is the largest social media company in the world, boasting close to 4 billion monthly active users worldwide. The firm's "Family of Apps," its core business, consists of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. End users can leverage these applications for a variety of different purposes, from keeping in touch with friends to following celebrities and running digital businesses for free. Meta packages customer data, gleaned from its application ecosystem and sells ads to digital advertisers. While the firm has been investing heavily in its Reality Labs business, it remains a very small part of Meta’s overall sales.

Micron is one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world, specializing in memory and storage chips. Its primary revenue stream comes from dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and it also has minority exposure to not-and or NAND, flash chips. Micron serves a global customer base, selling chips into data centers, mobile phones, consumer electronics, and industrial and automotive applications. The firm is vertically integrated.

JPMorgan Chase is one of the largest and most complex financial institutions in the United States, with more than $4.4 trillion in assets. It is organized into four major segments: consumer and community banking, corporate and investment banking, commercial banking, and asset and wealth management. JPMorgan operates and is subject to regulation in multiple countries.

Advanced Micro Devices designs a variety of digital semiconductors for markets such as PCs, gaming consoles, data centers (including artificial intelligence), industrial, and automotive applications. AMD’s traditional strength was in central processing units and graphics processing units used in PCs and data centers. However, AMD is emerging as a prominent player in AI GPUs and related hardware. Additionally, the firm supplies the chips found in prominent game consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox.

Visa is the largest payment processor in the world. In fiscal 2025, it processed almost $17 trillion in total volume. Visa operates in over 200 countries and processes transactions in over 160 currencies. Its systems are capable of processing over 65,000 transactions per second.

Cisco Systems is the largest provider of networking equipment in the world and one of the largest software companies in the world. Its largest businesses are selling networking hardware and software (where it has leading market shares) and cybersecurity software such as firewalls. It also has collaboration products, like its Webex suite, and observability tools. It primarily outsources its manufacturing to third parties and has a large sales and marketing staff—25,000 strong across 90 countries. Overall, Cisco employs 80,000 people and sells its products globally.

Mastercard is the second-largest payment processor in the world, having processed close to $10 trillion in volume during 2024. Mastercard operates in over 200 countries and processes transactions in over 150 currencies.

Oracle provides enterprise applications and infrastructure offerings through a variety of flexible IT deployment models, including on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid. Founded in 1977, Oracle pioneered the first commercial SQL-based relational database management system, which is commonly used by the world’s largest companies for high-volume online transaction processing workloads. Besides databases, Oracle also sells enterprise resource planning platforms and cloud infrastructure that play an increasingly important role in large language model training and inferencing.

Bank of America is one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, with more than $3.4 trillion in assets. It is organized into four major segments: consumer banking, global wealth and investment management, global banking, and global markets. Bank of America's consumer-facing lines of business include its network of branches and deposit-gathering operations, retail lending products, credit and debit cards, and small-business services. The company's Merrill Lynch operations provide brokerage and wealth-management services, as does its private bank. Wholesale lines of business include investment banking, corporate and commercial real estate lending, and capital markets operations. Bank of America has operations in several countries but is primarily US-focused.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Beijing. The bank listed its shares in mainland China and Hong Kong in 2006. It is China's largest by asset scale and by share of lending and deposits. Central Huijin Investment (China's sovereign wealth fund manager) and China's Ministry of Finance are ICBC's two largest shareholders, each with a stake of around 35%. ICBC operates over 16,000 outlets. Of these, 413 outlets are in 49 countries and regions overseas. Corporate banking, retail banking, and wholesale banking accounted for 48%, 40%, and 12% of total revenue, respectively, and 58%, 23%, and 18% of profit before tax in 2024. Overseas banking and other business contributed 13% of total revenue and 11% of profit before tax in 2024.

Arm Holdings is the IP owner and developer of the ARM architecture, which is used in 99% of the world’s smartphone CPU cores, and it also has high market share in other battery-powered devices like wearables, tablets, or sensors. Arm licenses its architecture for a fee, offering different types of licenses depending on the flexibility the customer needs. Customers like Apple or Qualcomm buy architectural licenses, which allow them to modify the architecture and add or delete instructions to tailor the chips to their specific needs. Other clients directly buy off-the-shelf designs from Arm. Both off-the-shelf and architectural customers pay a royalty fee per chip shipped.

Established in 1865 in Hong Kong, London-based HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, with assets of USD 3 trillion and over 40 million customers worldwide. It operates in more than 50 countries with over 200,000 full-time staff. Hong Kong and the United Kingdom are its two largest markets. The bank offers retail, commercial and institutional banking, global banking and markets, wealth management, and private banking.

As one of the Big Four banks, ABC is headquartered in Beijing. The bank evolved from a state-owned specialized bank to a state-controlled commercial bank. It was listed on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchanges in 2010. ABC operates a more than 20,000-branch network in China, providing corporate and retail banking products and services, and carries out treasury operations for its accounts or for its customers. Shareholders Central Huijin, China's state-owned investment company, and the Ministry of Finance own 40.14% and 35.29%, respectively. Corporate banking, retail banking, and wholesale banking accounted for 39%, 55%, and 3% of total revenue in 2024, respectively. Rural banking and urban banking contributed 49% and 51%, respectively, of total revenue during the same period.

China Construction Bank, headquartered in Beijing, is China's second-largest bank. It went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2005 and listed shares in mainland China in 2007. Central Huijin Investment, China's sovereign wealth fund manager, is the largest shareholder with a 57% share. Fullerton Financial Holdings (a subsidiary of Temasek) is the second-largest shareholder with a 4.99% stake. CCB strives to provide customers with comprehensive financial services. The corporate banking, retail banking, and wholesale banking business segments accounted for 26%, 45%, and 27% of profit before tax, respectively, in 2024.

Royal Bank of Canada is one of the two largest banks in Canada, with around CAD 2.3 trillion in assets at the end of fiscal 2025. It is a diversified financial services company, offering personal and commercial banking, wealth management, insurance, corporate banking, and capital markets services. The bank is concentrated in Canada and has dominant market shares. RBC also has wealth and capital market businesses in the US, UK, and other countries. RBC is a top 15 investment bank globally.

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.

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 market 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.

Wells Fargo is one of the largest banks in the United States, with approximately $2.1 trillion in balance-sheet assets. The company has four primary segments: consumer banking, commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, and wealth and investment management. It is almost entirely focused on the US market.

Beijing-headquartered Bank of China was founded in 1912. The bank has evolved as a central bank, international exchange bank, and state-owned bank specializing in foreign trade business. BOC was listed on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges in 2006. It provides a comprehensive range of financial services to customers across Greater China and overseas. Central Huijin, a Chinese state-owned investment company and BOC's largest shareholder, controls 64%. BOC has the most extensive global reach among Chinese banks, with operations in 64 countries and regions.

Incorporated in 1911, International Business Machines, or IBM, is one of the oldest technology companies in the world. It provides software, IT consulting services, and hardware to help business customers modernize their technology workflows. IBM operates in 175 countries and employs approximately 300,000 people. The company has a robust roster of business partners to service its clients, which includes 95% of all Fortune 500 companies. IBM’s products, including Red Hat, watsonx, and mainframes, handle some of the world’s most important data workloads in areas like finance and retail.

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.

Citigroup is a global financial-services company doing business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citigroup's operations are organized into five primary segments: services, markets, banking, US personal banking, and wealth management. The bank's primary services include cross-border banking needs for multinational corporates, investment banking and trading, and credit card services in the United States.

Marvell Technology is a fabless chip designer focused on wired networking, where it has the second-highest market share. Marvell serves the data center, carrier, enterprise, automotive, and consumer end markets with processors, optical and copper transceivers, switches, and storage controllers.

American Express is a global financial institution, operating in about 130 countries, that provides consumers and businesses charge and credit card payment products. The company also operates a highly profitable merchant payment network. It operates in four segments: US consumer services, US commercial services, international card services, and global merchant and network services. In addition to payment products, the company's commercial business offers expense management tools, consulting services, and business loans.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is the largest bank in Japan in terms of market capitalization and assets, with an 8.4% share of all domestic loans as of March 2025. It is the largest non-Chinese bank group globally and has a balance sheet slightly larger than those of JPMorgan Chase and HSBC Holdings. MUFG’s operations in Japan account for around half of profit, banking in Thailand and Indonesia for around 15%, and equity-method earnings from Morgan Stanley most of the rest.

Alibaba is the world's largest online and mobile commerce company as measured by gross merchandise volume. It operates China's online marketplaces, including Taobao (consumer-to-consumer) and Tmall (business-to-consumer). The China retail e-commerce platform is the most valuable cash flow-generating business at Alibaba. Additional revenue sources include China wholesale e-commerce, international retail and wholesale e-commerce, local consumer services, travel services, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, Cainiao logistics services, and other businesses.

Qualcomm develops and licenses wireless technology and designs chips for smartphones. The company's key patents revolve around CDMA and OFDMA technologies, which are standards in wireless communications that are the backbone of all 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. Qualcomm's IP is licensed by virtually all wireless device makers. The firm is also the world's largest wireless chip vendor, supplying nearly every premier handset maker with leading-edge processors. Qualcomm also sells RF-front end modules into smartphones, as well as chips into automotive and Internet of Things markets.

Toronto-Dominion is one of Canada's two largest banks with over CAD 2 trillion in assets. TD Bank operates four business segments: Canadian personal and commercial banking, US retail banking, wealth management and insurance, and wholesale banking. The bank derives more than 50% of its revenue from Canada and has dominant market share in nearly all banking products and services. TD has around 44% of its revenue from its US operations. Its US footprint spans from Maine to Florida, with a strong presence in the Northeast.

Santander's focus is on retail and commercial banking. Latin America is geographically the most significant operation, with Brazil making the largest contribution. Its continental European business is mainly in Spain and Portugal. Santander's UK presence is the result of its acquisition of Abbey building society. In the US, Santander operates a vehicle finance business and a regional bank focused on the Northeastern states.

Commonwealth Bank is Australia's largest bank with operations spanning Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Its core business is the provision of retail, business, and institutional banking services. The bank has emphasized its focus on banking in recent years with a numbers of asset divestments in wealth management and insurance.

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.

CrowdStrike is a cloud-based cybersecurity company specializing in next-generation security verticals such as endpoint, cloud workload, identity, and security operations. CrowdStrike’s primary offering is its Falcon platform that offers a proverbial single pane of glass for an enterprise to detect and respond to security threats attacking its IT infrastructure. The Texas-based firm was founded in 2011 and went public in 2019.

UBS is a global financial institution built around its core strength in wealth management, serving high and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. In Switzerland, it also operates as a traditional retail and commercial bank. Its investment bank and asset management divisions complement the wealth business, providing tailored solutions to UBS clients while serving third-party customers by leveraging UBS' global reach and expertise.

AppLovin is a vertically integrated advertising technology company that acts as a demand-side platform for advertisers, a supply-side platform for publishers, and an exchange facilitating 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, which is an ad optimizer operating within the DSP that allows advertisers to place ads according to specified return thresholds.

Charles Schwab is one of the largest retail-oriented financial-services companies in the US, with $11.9 trillion in client assets across its brokerage, banking, asset management, custody, financial advisory, and wealth-management businesses at the end of 2025. While best known for its retail brokerage offering, Schwab generates the lion’s share of its revenue and profits through its Charles Schwab Bank and asset management segments. The firm is a dominant player in registered investment advisor custody, with over 40% market share, and has recently pushed into wealth management with robo-advisory, direct indexing, and other managed-investment solutions.

Shopify offers an e-commerce platform primarily to small and medium-size businesses. The firm has two segments. The subscription solutions segment allows Shopify merchants to conduct e-commerce on a variety of platforms, including the company’s website, physical stores, pop-up stores, kiosks, social networks (Facebook), and Amazon. The merchant solutions segment offers add-on products for the platform that facilitate e-commerce and include Shopify Payments, Shopify Shipping, and Shopify Capital.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is roughly tied with Mizuho Financial Group for the status of Japan’s second-largest bank after Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. As of March 2025, its market share of domestic loans was 7.3%, compared with 8.4% for MUFG. It has a larger consumer finance business than the other two megabanks, owning 100% of the Promise business and SMBC Card. It also controls one of Japan’s largest leasing companies and SMBC Aviation Capital, one of the top five aircraft lessors globally. In securities, its SMBC Nikko unit is Japan’s third-largest retail broker, although SMFG has lagged somewhat in institutional securities business and asset management.

DBS Group is a Singapore-based banking group offering a full range of services to consumers, small to midsize enterprises, and corporations and institutions. Its main presence is in Singapore and Greater China. The acquisition of Lakshmi Vilas Bank has strengthened DBS' operations in India, and the acquisition of Citibank’s Taiwan operation should bring additional growth in Greater China. DBS' wealth management division is one of the largest in Asia, with assets under management of SGD 488 billion as of December 2025.

Despite its Spanish origins, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria generates only around one-fourth of its profits in Spain. We expect that on a normalized basis, BBVA's market-leading Mexican bank should contribute half of its earnings, while its Turkish operation should account for another 15%. The balance of BBVA's earnings comes from smaller operations in South America. BBVA is overwhelmingly a retail and commercial bank, with corporate and investment banking forming a minor part of the overall business. BBVA also offers insurance and investment products through its banking networks.

China Merchants Bank was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Shenzhen. The bank is China's seventh-largest listed bank by assets, with the largest distribution network among China's joint-stock banks. CMB's network has been expanding rapidly. Its outlets are located mainly in China's more developed areas, including the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas. The firm has 18% and 82% of its shares listed on the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges, respectively. It has no foreign strategic investors. China Merchants Group is its largest shareholder, with a 30% stake. Retail banking, corporate banking, and wholesale banking accounted for 49%, 51%, and 0% of total profit before tax, respectively, and 40%, 58%, and 2% of total revenue in 2024.

UniCredit is one of the two largest Italian retail and commercial banks, but roughly a half of its operations is outside Italy. UniCredit has a strong presence in Germany, Austria, and Central and Eastern Europe. It generates most of its revenue from retail banking, but also maintains a sizable corporate and investment bank.

HDFC Bank Ltd is an Indian bank. It operates in the following segments: Treasury, Retail banking, Wholesale banking, and Other banking business. The maximum revenue for the company is generated from its Retail banking segment, which serves retail customers through its branch network and other channels. This segment raises customer deposits and provides loans and other services to customers using different product groups. Its other operations include providing wholesale banking services to corporates, government entities, and other enterprises, generating income from its treasury operations, and performing para-banking activities such as offering credit cards, debit cards, etc. Geographically, the company generates a majority of its revenue from its operations in India.

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.

The merger of Banque Nationale de Paris and Paribas created BNP Paribas in 2000, making it the largest publicly traded bank in France. Although BNP Paribas has operations in about 80 countries, it considers France, Italy, and Belgium to be its home markets.