SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Morgan Stanley on Monday named its top five favorite “megacap” stocks and Apple Inc., the most valuable public company in the world, didn't make the cut.

Analyst Adam Parker and his team sifted through 41 companies with market capitalizations of more than $100 billion using different sets of criteria and ranked them from best to worst.

The only tech company to make it into the five was International Business Machines Corp. IBM, -1.72% . The other favorites are Bank of America Corp. BAC, -0.55% , Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD, +0.01% , J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.21% , and Citigroup Inc. C, -1.47% .

The “worst” stocks, according to Parker’s analysis, are Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM, -1.61% , Walt Disney Co. DIS, -1.22% , Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. BMY, -0.21% , UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH, +0.99% . and Chevron Corp. CVX, -0.73% .

Apple AAPL, -3.17% showed up at number 15 overall, barely edging out Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.78% .

Here is how Apple fared in the five different categories.

1. “What’s in the Price”: Although Apple is among the most promising mega caps in the longer term, it did poorly in terms of implied growth rate based on the current stock price and consensus estimates for the next three fiscal years. “To compute the cost of equity, we assumed a 3% risk-free rate and a 6% market risk premium.”

Thomson Reuters, Morgan Stanley

2. Consensus estimate: This criteria measures the gap between Morgan Stanley’s earnings projections with Wall Street’s consensus over the next three years. For Apple, the divide was almost negligible while Morgan Stanley was more upbeat than the average on Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.78% , Chevron, Schlumberger Ltd. SLB, -1.83% , Bank of America, and Amgen Inc. AMGN, -0.14% .

3. A 36-month quantitative model: The analysts evaluated the megacap stocks using a model based on share buybacks, price-to-forward earnings, return on equity, total yield (dividend plus repurchase yield), and 9-month price momentum.

Apple actually scored well in this category but still wasn't able to break into the top 5. “Amazon and Facebook are expensive on forward earnings relative to the other megacaps and thus rank poorly in the five factor quant model, while IBM’s valuation is enough to offset its weak momentum to make it screen attractively.”

4. Total return over the next five years: The stocks were sorted using a formula based on price appreciation and dividend yield and Facebook Inc. FB, -0.89% came out the big winner while Apple was near the bottom of the list.

Thomson Reuters, Morgan Stanley

5. “Quantamental” approach: For this category, the analysts ranked the companies based on the results of their three-month alpha model, the 24-month relative-return model, and in-house bull/bear ratio. Apple came in 26th. while Gilead, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -1.24% , and Oracle Corp. ORCL, -0.71% were the leaders.

The results of the five categories were then compiled for the penultimate list with the analysts assigning the following weights--15% for “What’s in the Price,” 20% for consensus estimate, 25% weight for quantitative model, 20% for total 5-year return, and 20% for “quantamental.”

“What’s interesting about these various approaches is that they produce completely different conclusions for some securities, with AMZN and CVX as examples,” Parker said, explaining the need for aggregation.