Saudi Aramco became the first publicly traded oil producer valued above $2 trillion in December 2019.
Saudi Aramco’s shares rose after its December 2019 listing, briefly pushing the company’s market capitalization above $2 trillion. The achievement came only days after its initial public offering and made it one of the two largest publicly traded companies in the world at that time.
The valuation reflected Saudi Aramco’s enormous oil reserves, production scale, refining operations, and importance to Saudi Arabia’s economy. Its listing also gave public investors a way to own a stake in a company that had previously been wholly state-owned.
The $2 trillion figure was a market valuation, not a measurement of the company’s annual revenue or physical oil reserves. It also depended on the share price, which can move substantially. Saudi Aramco remains majority-owned by the Saudi government, even though a portion of its shares is publicly traded on the Saudi Exchange.