AT&T; Joins Fortune 500 List as No. 8 : Exxon No. 1 but GM Closing In
Exxon, as expected, retained its ranking as the nation’s largest industrial company, while No. 2 General Motors moved closer to the top spot in the latest Fortune 500 rankings, Fortune magazine reported Thursday.
The most prominent newcomer to the list was newly divested American Telephone & Telegraph, which ranked eighth. It formerly had not qualified as an industrial company according to the magazine’s criteria for the list.
Chrysler vaulted into the top 15 for the first time since 1978.
The list, which ranks industrial companies according to 1984 sales, appears in the April 29 issue of Fortune.
Exxon checked in as the largest with sales of $90.9 billion in 1984, and GM was second at $83.9 billion, the magazine said. It noted that the sales gap separating the two companies had narrowed to $7 billion this year from $14 billion a year ago.
Third was Mobil with sales of $56 billion, followed by Ford Motor with sales of $52.4 billion. Those were the same positions the two companies held last year.
Texaco, which acquired Getty Oil last year, moved up to fifth place from the sixth spot a year ago with sales of $47.3 billion.
International Business Machines fell to sixth from the fifth spot with sales of $45.9 billion.
Retaining its seventh position was Du Pont with sales of $35.9 billion.
AT&T; ranked eighth with sales of $33.2 billion in its first appearance on the industrial companies’ list. Before its court-ordered divestiture at the start of 1984, AT&T; had failed to meet Fortune’s criteria for inclusion on the list of industrial companies. The magazine requires that a company derive more than 50% of sales from manufacturing, mining or both to qualify as an industrial concern.
General Electric came in ninth, up from the 10th spot a year ago, with sales of $27.9 billion. Standard Oil (Indiana) fell to the 10th spot from the No. 8 position last year with sales of $26.9 billion.
Falling from the top 10 was Chevron, which had ranked ninth last year but was 11th on the latest list. It had 1984 sales of $26.8 billion.
Chrysler moved from the 21st spot to No. 14 with sales of $19.6 billion, a gain of $6.3 billion over 1983.
The magazine also ranked companies by profit, and IBM led that list for the third straight year with $6.6 billion in net income in 1984. Second was Exxon at $5.5 billion, followed by GM at $4.5 billion and Ford at $2.9 billion.
Chrysler ranked fifth, the third auto maker among the top five companies in terms of profitability. It vaulted from No. 20 in terms of profitability as its net income tripled in 1984 to $2.4 billion.
The biggest money loser among the Fortune 500 was A. H. Robins, which it said lost $462 million in 1984. Thirty-four of the Fortune 500 companies lost money in 1984, compared to 60 a year earlier.
New York was home to the largest number of Fortune 500 companies with 80 headquartered in the state. Illinois has 52, Ohio 40, California 39 and Pennsylvania 37.
