Market Cap of 2047 Trillion Lost in 3 Years... Global Top 50 Companies Face 'Endemic Crisis'

$10 Billion Market Cap Company Drops by One-Third
Zoom Stock Falls 80% Since End of 2020
Due to Office Return and Decline in Online Shopping Demand

The market capitalization of 50 companies that benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic (global outbreak) has fallen by about $1.5 trillion (approximately 2047 trillion won) from the end of 2020 to the 6th of this month, according to major foreign media reports on the 8th.

According to S&P Global, technology companies make up the majority of the list of the top 50 companies with a market capitalization of over $10 billion that posted the largest profits in 2020. However, these companies have lost about one-third of their market capitalization since the end of 2020.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

A representative example is Zoom, a company that developed a video conferencing system. As companies worldwide shifted to remote work systems, its stock price surged by 765%, but from the end of 2020 to the 6th of this month, its stock price dropped by about 80%.

Cloud-based communication company RingCentral soared in 2020 riding the remote work boom, but later faced competition from big tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft (MS), causing its stock price to shrink by about 90%.

Home fitness company Peloton's stock price has fallen by more than 97% compared to the end of 2020, wiping out about $43 billion in market capitalization. Recently, CEO Barry McCarthy resigned and announced plans to cut 15% of the workforce.

Tesla was one of the companies whose stock price rose the most in 2020. By the end of 2020, its market capitalization had jumped 787% to $669 billion. However, it has since slid to $589 billion.

Singapore-based internet company Sea saw its market capitalization surge from $19 billion to $102 billion during the COVID-19 period as its core business sectors?gaming, e-commerce, and digital payments?all grew. However, concerns about slowing growth have since emerged, and its market cap is now down more than 60% compared to the end of 2020.

E-commerce companies Shopee, JD.com, and Chuy, which benefited from increased online shopping demand, suffered significant losses as the world entered the endemic phase of the pandemic.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, usage of video conferencing and online shopping surged, but as the endemic phase began, workers returned to offices, and high interest rates and living costs led to reduced demand for e-commerce.

Healthcare stocks also benefited from COVID-19 but are currently cooling off. Not only vaccine manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer but also Chinese companies such as WuXi Biologics, Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products, and Alibaba Health Information Technology saw their stock prices rise. However, the mood reversed as vaccine demand declined.

Among the 50 companies whose stock prices rose the most in 2020, only a few have seen their market capitalization increase since the end of 2020, including Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD (13.7%), cybersecurity company CrowdStrike (64.9%), software companies The Trade Desk (18.7%) and Datadog (40.6%), U.S. telecom company T-Mobile (13.7%), Chinese tech company CATL (0.8%), and Latin American online marketplace company Mercado Libre (0.6%).

However, this cannot compare to AI-related stocks. Although NVIDIA was not among the top 50 companies with the highest stock price increases in 2020, its market value has increased by more than $1.9 trillion since the end of 2020.