Alphabet Now World’s Most Valuable Company

The company smashed expectations on both ends, bringing in $21.3 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share. The announcement sent its share price up as much as 9% in after-hours trading.

Alphabet is now worth around $568bn, compared with Apple, which has a value of $535bn.

Google’s latest rise versus Apple began in July. From that point through the end of 2015, its shares soared 44 percent, while Apple’s sank 16 percent.

According to the company’s latest earnings report, Alphabet’s forays into health technology, self-driving cars and delivery drones, among other moonshots, lost the company $3.6 billion last year, compared to $1.9 billion in 2014. But those same efforts did generate more revenue this year for a total of $448 million, a 37 percent increase from 2014.

The last time Google was more valuable than Apple was in February 2010, when both companies were worth less than $200 billion. At the time, Apple had yet to release its first iPad, the newest iPhone on the market was the 3GS, and the Mac was the company’s biggest product line, accounting for one-third of revenue. Steve Jobs was still at the helm.

The company is also showing evidence of increased spending discipline under Alphabet’s Wall Street-trained CFO, Ruth Porat. Capital expenditures shrank to $2.1 billion in the last three months of 2015, compared to $3.55 billion a year earlier. Net income for the fourth quarter, meanwhile, rose $4.92 billion from $4.68 billion a year earlier.