The new Fortune 500 list is already out. Once again, California's top companies made the cut. Apple is placed third on this impeccable list; yes, California's blue-chip companies dominate the new star-studded Fortune 500 list. The Fortune 500 list primarily lists the top US companies ranked by their total yearly revenue. The coveted list included 53 firms that are headquartered in the Golden US State. California was second only to the 54 New York-listed entities. Notably, the 500 companies list is generally compiled, taking into account the results that the publicly-traded companies report. Privately traded company results are also included (companies that have filed financial statements with the relevant government agencies).
As noted, the top 10 California companies on the list include the tech giant Apple. The company ranked third nationwide despite its sales declining in recent months. McKesson Corp, the top pharmaceutical distributor, ranked fifth. Chevron, the renowned oil stalwart, came in No. 19. Chevron ranked relatively well despite the widely publicized scandal involving the discovery of unauthorized accounts. On its part, the banking giant Wells Fargo rose just a little bit to position 25.
Apple, the tech wizard, is based in Cupertino, while Wells Fargo and McKesson are headquartered in San Francisco. Chevron's headquarters is located in San Ramon. Among the Fortune 500 companies, three are headquartered within the Los Angeles city limits. Some of these are the engineering and construction behemoth, Aecom. It was ranked No. 61 on the big list. CBRG Group, the real estate services firm, came in No. 214, and Reliance Steel and Aluminum Co came in at No. 320. Reliance's main businesses revolve around buying bulk metal from mills, processing it, and selling it to various companies and machine shops.
Interestingly, companies led by women did not do so well in the new Fortune 500 list. There were only 32 companies that were led by female CEOs. While this was still a record number, it merely comprised 6.4% of the overall total. And seven of the 32 companies have their headquarters in California. Some of these are Ross Stores Inc, Yahoo, Hewlett Packard, PG&E, Mattel, Sempra Energy, and Oracle. Further, Wal-Mart stores retained their top place on the list. The company earned an impressive revenue totaling almost $486 million. Once again, Ark, the Bentonville-based retail giant, was ranked first. The company has held this position for the last 13 out of 16 years. Ark is the biggest employer on the list- it employs 2.3 million people.
Among the companies appearing on the list, Apple raked in the biggest profit. Overall, the company earned nearly &46 billion. According to Fortune, the 500 listed companies raked in a combined $12 trillion in revenue. This is about 2/3 of the US gross domestic product. The profit margin was estimated at about $890 billion.
Here's a sampling of all California companies that made the list: Apple, Alphabet, Chevron, Intel, Wells Fargo, McKesson, Hewlett Packard, Disney, Cisco Systems, Oracle, HP, Facebook, Gilead Sciences, Molina Healthcare, Qualcomm, Amgen, Gap, PG&E, Aecom, Western Digital, Visa, CBRE Group, Synnex, Edison International, Western Digital, Farmers Insurance Exchange, Ross Stores, PayPal Holdings, Core Mark Holding, Sempra Energy, Applied Materials, Ebay, Netflix, Pacific Life, Tesla, Charles Schwab, Reliance Steel an Alluminum, Live Nation Entertainment, Salesforce.com, Franklin Resources, Nvidia, Activision Blizzard, A-Mark Precious Metals, Avery Dennison, Sanmina, Lam Research, First American Financial, Adobe Systems, Clorox, Mattel, NetApp, Robert Half International, Yahoo and Symantec.
Apple enjoys a rare distinction: Its California's highest-revenue generating company. In the fiscal year 2019 apple raked in about $260.2 billion. The company employs 137,000 people. Overall, the Fortune 500 companies employ a total of 29.1 million people all over the world. The California-based companies that made the list enjoy a combined revenue of a whopping $1.5 trillion. Significantly, this is the 9th year Walmart has performed excellently, making it to the top of the coveted list. Analysts note that the coronavirus pandemic generally took a negative toll on the latest Fortune 500 listing. Generally, as many countries went into a lockdown, the global companies somewhat hit a pause. Thus, the overall profits for the top Fortune 500 companies dropped considerably. The earnings dropped from $1.24 trillion- $859 billion. Over 70% of these companies realized a major decline in profits.
But a few of the best-performing sectors still realized handsome profits despite the coronavirus ravages. Analysts note that these well-performing sectors include household products and technology. The former reported a major rise in profitability, raking in a 106% rise in overall profits. Further, women-led companies also improved significantly. Of course, the women-led company's fortunes are expected to improve even further in the future. And there was another first- two Black women were listed among the Fortune 500 company CEOs. The two are No. 79 (TIAA's) Thasunda Brown Duckett and No.16 (Walgreens Boots Alliance's) Roz Brewer. This was a significant milestone.