Apple Leaps Up Fortune Global 500 Rankings

Apple has leaped from third to first place for profit and from twelfth to sixth place for revenue in the Fortune Global 500 rankings of the world's biggest companies.

Global 500 2021
After reaching a record high of $33.3 trillion in last year's rankings, total revenue for the world's biggest companies fell 4.8 percent to $31.7 trillion this year. Even so, the combined sales of all of the companies on the list are equal to over one-third of global GDP. Walmart was again the world's largest company, for the eighth consecutive year.

Apple's revenue is reported as $274.515 billion, of which $57.411 billion is profit. This is a moderate increase from last year, when the company's revenue was reported to be $260.174 billion, of which $55.256 billion was profit. Apple is also estimated to now have 10,000 more employees than it did last year, climbing to approximately 147,000.

Apple is now the most profitable company in the world according to the Fortune 500, followed by Saudi Aramco with $49.287 billion, SoftBank Group with $47.053 billion, and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China with $45.783 billion. For revenue, Apple is now only surpassed by Walmart, State Grid, Amazon, China National Petroleum, and Sinopec Group.

The pandemic created challenges and opportunities for Apple. CEO Tim Cook had to close stores and send home engineers. But with Apple customers worldwide working and learning from home, iPad and Macintosh computer sales skyrocketed to their highest levels ever. And fiscal-year revenue hit an all-time record too, of $275 billion. That helped Apple's stock price soar; it gained 80.7% in 2020. As that year wound down, regulators fixed their sights on Apple for potentially abusing its power over the iOS app store. A House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee report in October concluded that Apple "exerts monopoly power" in its app store to harm competition and increase prices for consumers. Meanwhile, testimony in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Fortnite developer Epic Games will likely increase pressure on legislators to limit Apple's power.

Apple has ranked in the Fortune Global 500 top 20 since 2013. In June, Apple ranked third in the Fortune 500 list of America's largest companies. Apple has now ranked in the top five for eight consecutive years.

The company recently reported record third fiscal quarter revenue of $81.4 billion and net quarterly profit of $21.7 billion, which corresponds to the second calendar quarter of this year.

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Top Rated Comments

ArtOfWarfare Avatar
51 months ago

<insert classic DOOMED! comment here>
When you're at the top, the only way you can go is down.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
spiderman0616 Avatar
51 months ago

When you're at the top, the only way you can go is down.
Yeah, well Apple has defied every other Business 101 adage, so I think we can put this particular one away for the time being. Even if Apple just decided to coast for the next 10 years, they could operate on fumes and still be fine for quite a while.

Just because a business is good doesn’t mean it’s doomed or finished growing. I have never understood that mentality. It’s like people search for things to worry/argue about.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Yokon54 Avatar
51 months ago

For the owners (shareholders) of a company, profit is probably the best way to measure the value, but for non-owners, total expenditures are probably the best way to determine value as that is the money that the company sends back into the economy.
We have the value of the company know Apple is the largest. You can make up another way of valuing, but everyone with a stake in Apple has assessed the value at $2.42T.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Yokon54 Avatar
51 months ago

Jeff Bezos's net worth is ~$200B. About the same as the 15th largest company (Samsung)'s revenue.

Jeff Bezos could purchase every single item that Samsung produces in a single year. Not one of everything. All of everything they make. And that's not factoring in that if somebody really wanted to do that for some reason, they'd probably be able to get a pretty massive discount for placing such a huge order.
Well deserved too.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
thebeans Avatar
51 months ago

When you're at the top, the only way you can go is down.
Nope. You can go higher. Create a new top.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
51 months ago

Revenue is a pretty silly way of valuing largest company.

Apple is fairly easily the largest and most valueable company by both profit and market cap.

Their last 12 months of profit has been over $84B and currently have a $2.42T valuation.
Market cap is a silly way of valuing a company.

Market cap easily changes if a company buys back a large amount of their stock as Apple has done over the years, or if a company issues A LOT of stock like AMC has done so far this year.

If you're trying to determine the value of a company, you'd be using a multiple of ways: looking at revenue, profit or price-to-earnings, assets vs liabilities, using discounted cash-flow analysis
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)