tradeval

Discovery desk

Beaten down companies

The largest companies trading well below their own highs, ranked by the market value the fall erased rather than by the percentage — because a tenth off a trillion is more money than most companies are worth.

Rank by
Show companies
Screening the market

How the lost value is worked out

Today’s share count priced at the 52-week high, less what the company is worth now. A company that reached $4 trillion and is worth $3.5 trillion has lost $500 billion by this measure.

It is an estimate, not a record. It is not the market capitalisation the company actually carried on the day of the high, because the share count moves underneath it — a year of buybacks means fewer shares now than then, and issuance means more. Read it as what the fall is worth at today’s size, which is the question people are usually asking.

The high is the highest price of the last 52 weeks, or since listing where that is shorter. Lines marked new listing have traded under a year, so their high is usually a post-listing one and the fall is measured from it rather than from a settled price.

Where a company lists more than once — two share classes, or an ADR beside a foreign ordinary — only the most traded line is counted, so one company appears once.

A screen, not a recommendation. A company being far below its high says nothing about whether it is cheap: the fall may be the market correcting a price that was wrong, or pricing in something that has since become true. Open a company to read what is underneath it.

Common questions

What does "lost market cap" mean?

The market value a fall erased: the company's share count priced at its 52-week high, less what it is worth today. A company that reached $4 trillion and is now worth $3.5 trillion has lost $500 billion by this measure. It is an estimate rather than a record, because the share count moves underneath it — buybacks leave fewer shares than the company had at the high, and issuance leaves more.

Why rank by value lost instead of percentage down?

Because the percentage answers the less interesting question. A $2 billion company halving is the larger number on screen and the smaller event; a trillion-dollar company slipping a tenth barely registers as a percentage and erases more value than most companies have ever been worth. Ranking on the money puts the falls that actually moved the market at the top.

Does being far below its high mean a stock is cheap?

No. A fall says what the price did, not what the business is worth. The decline may be the market correcting a price that was wrong, or pricing in something that has since become true, and in both cases the lower price is the right one. This is a screen for finding companies to look at, not a list of companies to buy.

How is the 52-week high handled for a recent listing?

It is the highest price since the company listed, which for anything under a year is not a full 52-week high at all. Those lines are marked as new listings, because a post-listing high is often set in the first days of trading before a price settles, and a fall measured from it says less than the same fall from a year of prices.