From FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) to ‘Magnificent 7’ (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, and Meta), America’s greatest companies are united by two things now: technology and specifically artificial intelligence. These seven companies make humongous profits and outperform other companies on valuations.
Good People, how time flies. In 1917, when US Steel was leading the American public market, the message was “steel is wealth”. US Steel had become the first US company to hit a market cap of $1 billion in 1901. In 1955, it was General Motors which touched $10 billion first. But two years later, IBM became the dominant entity, demonstrating the new era of technology infrastructure.
Under Jack Welch of General Electric, in 1995, GE became a $100 billion before Apple ran wild to hit $1 trillion in 2018. Check the trajectory, you will notice one thing: over time, the richest, fastest growing and most capitalized American companies have become native data-anchored companies.
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Nigeria which today is dominated by cement, food and telecom infrastructure companies will experience its moment also. It does happen. Simply, the empires of the future will be anchored on Numbers, just as Pythagoras postulated many centuries ago.
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Will Nigeria follow this trajectory? It might not happen, the reason being that the companies that will take over aren’t really Nigerian, they are Nigerian only by association, so not likely to list in the local market. It’s a major distortion to our own ascension but not many will see it, because we are in hurry to escape poverty.
The industries leading currently in Nigeria are there because you cannot really operate them from elsewhere, they are not location agnostic, so they are conditioned to build from within.
For the newer species to dominate valuations in the capital market, the ownership structure and perception about the local market will have to shift significantly, else we will keep reporting the same set of entities as the greatest for a long time.
Right now we consume too much foreign education, we want to live there too, and these things shape our worldview and how we see economic development in the homeland. The most influential thing in the world are the media and universities, they shape everything else. If you have not been conscious, start being intentional from today.
Not everyone cares about your religions, but if your media and universities are not strong, then you are owned for life.