Qiming Information Valuation Multiples

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).

Tesla is a vertically integrated battery electric vehicle automaker and developer of real world artificial intelligence software, which includes autonomous driving and humanoid robots. The company has multiple vehicles in its fleet, which include luxury and midsize sedans, crossover SUVs, a light truck, and a semi truck. Tesla also plans to begin selling a sports car and offer a robotaxi service. Global deliveries in 2025 were nearly 1.64 million vehicles. The company sells batteries for stationary storage for residential and commercial properties including utilities and solar panels and solar roofs for energy generation. Tesla also owns a fast-charging network and an auto insurance business.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CATL, headquartered in Ningde, Fujian Province, is a global leading battery manufacturer founded in 2011. The company specializes in the development and production of lithium-ion batteries for EVs and energy storage systems. CATL is the largest EV battery manufacturer in the world and leads the industry in innovative battery technology development for higher-energy density and safety, longer battery service life and super-fast charging. CATL is also involved in the manufacturing of cathode and other related battery materials. Through its subsidiary Brunp, it works with customers to create a closed-loop battery life cycle from production, application, to recycling.

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.

Founded in 1937, Toyota is one of the world's largest automakers, with 11.0 million units sold at retail in fiscal 2025, including 10.3 million across the Toyota and Lexus brands. Brands include Toyota, Lexus, Daihatsu, and truck maker Hino; market share in Japan is about 50% excluding mini-vehicles, while US share is around 14%. The firm also owns stakes in Denso, a parts supplier, about 20% of Subaru, and holds investments in many other firms, including shares of Uber Technologies, Joby Aviation, Aurora Innovation, Isuzu Motors, and about 5% in each of Mazda and Suzuki. Fiscal 2025 sales excluding financial services were JPY 43.8 trillion. Toyota also has a financing arm and manufactures homes and boats.

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.

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.

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.

ABB supplies electrical equipment and automation products. Founded in the late 19th century, the company was created out of the merger of two old industrial companies: ASEA and BBC. Its products include electrical equipment, industrial robots, and equipment used for industrial automation, sold via approximately 19 business divisions. ABB is the number-one or -two supplier in two-thirds of its product segments.

Amphenol is a global supplier of connectors, sensors, and interconnect systems. It holds the second-largest connector market share globally and sells into the automotive, broadband, commercial air, industrial, IT and data communications, military, mobile devices, and mobile networks end markets. Amphenol is diversified geographically, with operations in 40 countries.

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.

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.

Uber Technologies is a technology provider that matches riders with drivers, hungry people with restaurants and food couriers, and shippers with carriers. The firm's on-demand technology platform is currently utilized by traditional cars as well as autonomous vehicles, but could eventually be used for additional products and services, such as delivery via drones or electronic vehicle take-off and landing (eVTOL) technology. Uber operates in over 70 countries, with over 202 million users who order rides or food at least once a month.

Honeywell traces its roots to 1885 with Albert Butz’s firm, Butz Thermo-Electric Regulator, which produced a predecessor to the modern thermostat. Other inventions by Honeywell include biodegradable detergent and autopilot. Today, Honeywell is a global multi-industry behemoth with one of the largest installed bases of equipment. It operates through four business segments: aerospace technologies, industrial automation, energy and sustainability solutions, and building automation. Recently, Honeywell has made several portfolio changes to focus on fewer end markets and align with a set of secular growth trends. The firm is working diligently to expand its installed base, deriving around one third of its revenue from recurring aftermarket services.

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.

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.

Founded in 1995, BYD is a leading Chinese manufacturer in the design, development, and production of new energy vehicles, or NEVs. In March 2022, the firm discontinued production of internal combustion engine, or ICE, vehicles. Its products primarily target the growing midpriced mass-market segment in China’s passenger vehicle market. The company sold about 4.3 million passenger NEVs in 2024, accounting for 35% of the Chinese passenger NEV market. Besides automobile production, the company is also engaged in handset components and assembly services, as well as the rechargeable battery and photovoltaics business. After more than 25 years of development, the company has established over 30 industrial parks worldwide.

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.

Hyundai Motor Co is engaged in the manufacturing and distribution of motor vehicles and parts. The business of the group is operated through a vehicle, finance, and other segments. Its vehicle segment is engaged in the manufacturing and sale of motor vehicles. The finance segment operates vehicle financing, credit card processing, and other financing activities. The other segment includes the research and development, train manufacturing, and other activities. The company derives the majority of its revenue from the vehicle segment.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Synopsys is a provider of electronic design automation software and intellectual property 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. Synopsys’ comprehensive portfolio is benefiting from a convergence of semiconductor companies moving up the stack of technologies toward systems-like companies, and systems companies moving down-stack toward in-house chip design. The resulting expansion in EDA customers alongside secular digitalization of various end markets benefits EDA vendors like Synopsys.

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.

Following Johnson Controls’ divestiture of its residential and light commercial HVAC businesses to Bosch in 2025, nearly all of its revenue comes from commercial HVAC (60%) and fire and security products and services (40%). A 2016 merger joined Johnson Controls’ HVAC and Tyco’s fire and security businesses with the premise that there is synergy in offering a broader variety of automation products and solutions to commercial buildings. We estimate Johnson Controls’ pro forma revenue mix will be one-third products, one-third installation, and one-third services.

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.

Bloom Energy designs, manufactures, sells, and installs solid oxide fuel cell systems for on-site power generation. Bloom Energy Servers are fuel-flexible and can use natural gas, biogas, and hydrogen to create 24/7 electricity for stationary applications. Bloom sells its systems in the United States and internationally.

General Motors Co. emerged from the bankruptcy of General Motors Corp. (old GM) in July 2009. GM has eight brands and operates under three segments: GM North America, GM International, and GM Financial. The United States now has four brands instead of eight under old GM. The company regained its US market share leadership in 2022, after losing it to Toyota due to the chip shortage in 2021. 2025 US share was 17.4%, up 60 basis points from 2024. The Cruise autonomous vehicle arm, which GM now owns outright, previously operated driverless geofenced AV robotaxi services in San Francisco and other cities, but after a 2023 accident, GM decided that it will focus on personal AVs. GM Financial became the company's captive finance arm in 2010 via the purchase of AmeriCredit.

LG Energy Solution is the third-largest battery maker for electric vehicles with about 11% global share in 2024, according to SNE Research. The EV battery segment is the largest revenue contributor, which accounted for more than 60% of total revenue in 2024. LGES also manufactures batteries for mobility, mobile phones, laptops, electrical devices, and energy storage systems. The company was spun off from LG Chem’s battery division in December 2020 and listed on the Korea Exchange in January 2022. It has global manufacturing facilities in Korea, China, Poland, and the United States. Key customers include General Motors, Tesla, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Stellantis.

Lumentum Holdings Inc is a California-based technology firm. The company provides two types of optical and photonic products: optical components that are used in telecommunications networking equipment, and commercial lasers for manufacturing, inspection, and life-science lab uses. Its segments are Optical Communications and Commercial Lasers. The firm is also expanding into new optical applications, such as 3-D sensing laser diode for consumer electronics. It generates maximum revenue from the OpComms segment. The OpComms segment products include a wide range of components, modules, and subsystems to support customers including carrier networks for access (local), metro (intracity), long-haul, and submarine (undersea) applications.

Rheinmetall is an international group active in various markets with leading technological products and services. The sales focus is on the security technology and mobility segments. Since February 2021, the group structure has been made up of five divisions-vehicle systems, weapons and ammunition, electronic solutions, sensors and actuators, and materials and trade. The vehicle systems, weapons and ammunition, and electronic solutions divisions are among the defense and security industry's leading suppliers of innovative products to German and international defense forces. The sensors and actuators and materials and trade divisions' core area of expertise is the reduction of emissions, pollutants and fuel consumption.

CoreWeave Inc is a modern cloud infrastructure technology company that offers the CoreWeave Cloud Platform which consists of proprietary software and cloud services that deliver the automation and efficiency needed to manage complex AI infrastructure at scale. Its platform supports the development and use of ground-breaking models and the delivery of the next generation of AI applications that are changing the way of living and working across the globe.

Nebius is a vertically integrated cloud provider focusing on AI and high-performance computing. It is a carve-out of the previous Russian tech firm Yandex, following the Russian sanctions since the Ukraine-Russia war. Nebius designs and operates its own data centers and servers across Europe and the US, with a total capacity of several hundred megawatts. In September 2025, Microsoft became a major Nebius client under a multiyear $17 billion revenue agreement to provide computing capacity.

Ford Motor Co. manufactures automobiles under its Ford and Lincoln brands. In March 2022, the company announced that it will run its combustion engine business, Ford Blue, and its BEV business, Ford Model e, as separate businesses but still all under Ford Motor. The company has over 13% market share in the United States, about 10% share in the UK, and just over 1% share in China including Taiwan and unconsolidated affiliates. Sales in the US made up about 65% of 2025 total company revenue. Ford has about 169,000 employees, including about 56,300 UAW employees, and is based in Dearborn, Michigan.

Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd manufactures and sells electric wires and cables, and other products. The company operates through five segments. The Automotive related business covers wire harnesses, anti-vibration rubber, hoses, electrical parts, and traffic control systems. The Electronics related business provides electronic wires, flexible printed circuits, fluoropolymer products, and metal components. The Environment and Energy related business handles power transmission equipment, substation systems, vacuum and beam equipment, and conductive products. The Industrial Materials business includes steel wire, tools, optical components, and sintered parts. The Information and Communication business offers fiber optic cables, communication equipment, and optical devices.

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.

Mercedes-Benz Group is a premium automotive original equipment manufacturer, selling around 2 million passenger cars, including its Chinese joint venture, and just under 400,000 vans per year. The company's financial profile improved significantly following the spinoff of Daimler Truck in 2021. Unlike most automotive OEMs, Mercedes operates under its brand alone. In 2024, 14% of its passenger cars sold were top end (G Class, Maybach, AMG, S Class), 59% were core (C and E Class), and 27% entry (A and B Class). In volume terms, Asia and Europe are Mercedes' largest markets, each at just under 40% of 2024 vehicle sales, followed by North America at 16%.

In addition to its legacy software-defined radio franchise, L3Harris Technologies has through a series of acquisitions established franchises producing uncrewed aerial vehicles, sensors, avionics, space-based systems, missiles, and solid rocket motors. It also adapts civilian aircraft for military use and provides military and commercial training services, and maintains the US Federal Aviation Administration's communications infrastructure.