Reuters
Alibaba founder Jack Ma during a presentation for Singles' Day.
- Tech stocks have generally outperformed the broader stock market this year, but some tech companies have done better than others.
- Tencent and Alibaba, both Chinese companies, are among the best performers, while Jack Dorsey's Square more than doubled in the past year.
Tech stocks have been particular standouts this year, as the infamous FANG stocks - Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google - have all posted gains of at least 30%, double the 15% growth of the S&P 500. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 posted a gain of 29.37% so far this year.
But the FANG stocks, however impressive their growth, aren't the biggest standouts in the tech sector. A handful of companies have posted gains that far outpace the likes of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google this year.
Of the FANG stocks, Netflix is the best performing. It grew 46.98% so far this year, but was matched by Salesforce and pales in comparison to Square's 232% growth.
Andy Kiersz / Business Insider
Here are some notable tech companies that have outperformed the big-name FANG stocks, in order of performance.
- Salesforce (CRM) +48% to $104.42: Salesforce doesn't wield the same name recognition as Netflix or Facebook, but the cloud software company has been outperforming under the watch of CEO Marc Benioff. Benioff has said he hopes to grow his company's revenue to $20 billion by 2022, which would be nearly double the $10.35 billion it expects to rake in this year. Benioff already announced that he expects 20% revenue growth next year.
- Nvidia (NVDA) +93.72% to $197.52: Artificial intelligence has exploded in popularity this year, and Nvidia has positioned itself extremely well for the coming AI revolution. Nvidia's graphics cards are used to speed up the training of AI systems and are being added to data centers across the globe to aid in the influx of AI research. It also helps that mining cryptocurrencies like ethereum can be sped up with the addition of Nvidia's cards.
- Alibaba (BABA) +99.22% to $176.74: Alibaba is often called the Amazon of China, and the e-commerce company has started to expand its reach abroad. Perhaps the best illustration of Alibaba's strength comes from its recent Singles Day, where one day of sales pulled in more than $25 billion. Amazon's comparable Prime Day event brought in about $1 billion this year.
- Tencent (Traded in the US as an ADR) +100.04% to $48.60: In early November, Tencent surpassed Facebook in terms of market cap and became the first Asian company worth more than $500 billion. Tencent's biggest product is WeChat, which is the dominant social media ecosystem in China. The company also has a powerful digital payments platform baked into many of its services. Recent declines have put Tencent back below Facebook in size, but the company's growth for the year is still impressive.
- Square (SQ) +172.77% $37.57: While CEO Jack Dorsey's other company, Twitter, gained just 24% over the year, Square has flourished and skyrocketed in the last 11 months. The payments company has grown its payments volume, cut costs and introduced its platform into ever bigger businesses.