Wal-Mart Tops Fortune 500 List
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. retained the top spot in Fortune magazine’s 2005 ranking of the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies, but soaring commodity prices led to big gains in revenues and profits for oil and metal producers.
Wal-Mart was No. 1 on the Fortune 500 for the fourth straight year, with 2004 sales of more than $288.19 billion, up about 11% from 2003.
Exxon Mobil Corp. ranked second once again with $270.77 billion in sales, up 27% from the year before as the price of oil rose above $50 a barrel and gasoline sold for more than $2 a gallon. The company also topped Fortune’s profit charts for the second year in a row with $25.3 billion in earnings, breaking Ford Motor Co.’s record from 1998.
Time Warner Inc.’s Fortune magazine first published the sales rankings in 1954, and since then only Wal-Mart, General Motors Corp. and Exxon Mobil have topped the lists.
The only change in the top 10 came as IBM Corp. slipped a rung to No. 10 with $96.29 billion in sales and American International Group Inc. -- now facing a government probe of its accounting -- edged up to No. 9 from No. 10 with $98.61 billion.
Automakers GM and Ford ranked No. 3 and No. 4 respectively, despite GM’s $2-billion drop in sales to $193.52 billion from 2003. General Electric Co. came in fifth with $152.36 billion, followed by oil companies ChevronTexaco Corp. with $147.97 billion and ConocoPhillips with $121.66 billion -- both beneficiaries of rising oil product prices -- and Citigroup Inc. with $108.28 billion.
Thirty-eight of the 42 industry sectors that Fortune tracked posted increased profits, while electronics and electrical equipment, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and airlines suffered profit declines.
With China’s surging demand for raw materials and commodity prices reaching new heights, metal producers witnessed the most impressive profit growth over the last year, with gains of more than 800%.
“If a company’s taking stuff out of the ground, it was making money,” Fortune writer Janice Revell said. Aluminum company Alcoa Inc. at No. 79 saw a 40% rise in profit, while copper miner Phelps Dodge Corp. increased profit 11-fold.
“We’re seeing old-fangled, low-glamour companies at the forefront,” Revell said.
One notable debut on the list was media conglomerate News Corp. at No. 98. Rupert Murdoch’s company moved its headquarters from Australia to the United States last year and recently increased its ownership of Fox Entertainment Group Inc.
