Which company is larger?

[Grimes]

RVDondaPC said:

Pipedream24 said:
@ Rvdondapc 1. Since you are an employee, you can't turn a profit, you earn a wage. 2. I'm not arguing that profits are a way to measure how large a business is. I was just refuting leo-j's blanket statement he made earlier in the thread. 3. My whole argument is that based on how the investment community views the size of a business (Market Cap). Sony is the smallest by this measure. If people diasgree with how the business world perceives the size of a company...I don't know what to tell you. 4. Would you call Berkshire Hathaway a small company?

1. it's just semantics no need to argue this point.2. Fair enough. I guess I was doing the samething to your out of context(from my perspective) blank statement. 3. Market Cap is one way to determine a company size but like all measures it has it's flaws. There is no one thing that can be used to measure the size of a company. The main flaw being that each time a company pays out a dividend it is paying out a portion of the company's earned value. Sony has a long history of paying dividends compared to those companies. If a company does not pay out a dividend and keeps all of it's profits this money's value is continuously compounded by investments made by the company on behalf of this money. Another flaw is that market cap is perceived value and based on potential value rather than current value. Is Sony or Nintendo a bigger company? I don't know. I mean going by market value there are faux companies that don't even exist or have value that could potentially have higher market caps than actual profitable companies. 4. Berkshire Hathaway is a huge company. However if it had paid a quarterly dividend for the past 30 years it's stock price wouldn't be even close to where it is now. I'm not saying if it paid a dividend it would be a shit company or something, but it's market cap would be much smaller. 

 

Nintendo is the company that has been giving substantial dividends lately. Microsoft also has a small dividend. Sony gives no dividend.

I really don't see what dividends have to do with anything. Some of most successful companies give dividends, others do not.