Walmart No Longer Tops Fortune 500 — What Company Does?
Fortune’s annual list of the 500 wealthiest companies didn’t contain many surprises. The biggest surprise, however, wasn’t who made the list but where they made it.
Walmart regularly ranks on top as the world’s largest retail chain and the largest company on the annual Fortune 500 list. This year, though, it dropped a notch to second place behind Exxon.
The company earned well over $446 million in revenue for 2011 to retain its status as the biggest retail chain, but it wasn’t enough to drive it to the top of Fortune’s list for the third year in a row. The magazine blamed the dip in revenues to an aggressive price cut across the board “to reverse its declining same store sales in the US.”
Exxon, however, had a stellar year, an easy feat for an industry that reached record prices for a product that has always been in high demand. Revenues jumped by a whopping 28 percent to $452 billion and profits jumped by 35 percent to just over $41 billion.
Fortune reported that Exxon now produces equal amounts of oil and natural gas to help drive it to the top spot on their list.
Fortune’s Top 10 Wealthiest Companies and Their Total Revenue for 2011
1. Exxon – $452.9 million
2. Wal-Mart – $446.9 million
3. Chevron – $245.6 million
4. ConocoPhillips – $237.3 million
5. General Motors – $150.3 million
6. General Electric – $147.6 million
7. Berkshire Hathaway – $143.7 million
8. Fannie Mae – $137.5 million
9. Ford – $136.3 million
10. Hewlett-Packard – $127.2 million
[Fortune]