An interesting take on "Size":
"Let's take "big" first. In commenting on GE and Honeywell, a number
of reporters have called GE one of the three biggest companies, along
with Cisco and Microsoft. This is confusing market capitalization,
(i.e., the price of the company if you were to buy all the shares at
today's market price) with size. Price is not size. If price were the
same as size, I've got news for you: I live in the biggest mansion on
earth because I'll sell it to anyone for $1 trillion, and not a penny
less. That's my price. Pretty big house, right? Of course not. The size
of a house is a measure of it's real assets...the number of rooms, the
square footage and so on. The venerable Fortune 500 list measures
companies by sales, which is closer to reality. On this year's list,
GE is 5th, Microsoft is 84th and Cisco is 146th. And if you look at
assets on the books, GE is still miles ahead of the other two. There
may be other ways to measure size, but few are as fickle or as
potentially misleading as price, which can shrivel (or inflate) on
a few false rumors."
Peter Nulty
Editor, Money Mail
moneymail@online.cnbc.com
For example who is bigger Cisco or General Motors:
General Motors Market Cap= $31B, Sales=$185B
to
Cisco Market Cap=$404B, Sales=$19B
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