The new Fortune 500 list is out. These California companies made the cut

By Makeda Easter

June 7, 2017 7:10 PM PT

The latest version of the Fortune 500 list came out Wednesday, and it’s studded with California companies.

The list, which ranks U.S. companies by total yearly revenue, includes 53 firms whose headquarters are in the Golden State — a total that’s second only to New York’s 54. (The list of 500 companies is compiled by looking at results reported by publicly traded firms, as well as from the privately traded ones that file financial statements with a government agency.)

For the record:

11:37 a.m. April 27, 2024This story says Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had revenue of nearly $486 million. Its revenue was nearly $486 billion.

The California companies in the top 10 are tech giant Apple Inc., which ranked third nationwide even as its sales began to falter, and pharmaceutical distributor McKesson Corp., which ranked fifth.

Oil stalwart Chevron Corp. came in 19th. Despite its scandal over unauthorized accounts, Wells Fargo & Co. rose a bit, landing at 25th.

Apple is based in Cupertino, McKesson and Wells Fargo have headquarters in San Francisco and Chevron is in San Ramon.

Three of the Fortune 500 companies have headquarters within Los Angeles city limits: engineering and construction giant Aecom, ranking 161st; real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc., ranking 214th; and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co., which ranked 320th and whose business is to buy bulk metal from mills, process it and sell it to machine shops and other companies.

Companies led by women are scarce on the Fortune 500 list. This year, the list included 32 companies with female chief executives — a record number but still only 6.4% of the total. Seven of those companies are based in California: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Oracle Corp., PG&E Corp., Ross Stores Inc., Sempra Energy, Mattel Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. retained the top spot on the list, boasting revenue of nearly $486 million. The retail giant, based in Bentonville, Ark., has been ranked first for 13 of the last 16 years. It’s also the biggest employer on the list, with 2.3 million workers.

Of the companies on the list, Apple hauled in the biggest profit: nearly $46 billion.

Fortune said the 500 companies on the list posted a combined $12 trillion in revenue — equivalent to two-thirds of the U.S. gross domestic product — and $890 billion in profit.

Here are the California companies on the list: