FORTUNE has announced the 68th FORTUNE 500, its annual list of the largest corporations in the United States, ranked by revenue for the 2021 fiscal year. Apple places third on the list behind Walmart and Amazon. It’s the tech giant’s same ranking as in 2021’s list.
The top five companies held their positions on the list, with Walmart taking the top spot for the tenth year in a row, generating $5.1 trillion cumulative revenue over that time. At No. 2, Amazon.com saw a 22% jump in revenue, eclipsing the $450 billion mark. In the No. 3 spot, Apple is the most profitable company on the list for the seventh time in eight years, earning $95 billion in profits.
Here’s what FORTUNE says about Apple: Despite facing global setbacks, Apple hit multiple positive milestones in 2021. After many of its factories and those of its suppliers were shut down in China owing to COVID, Apple was forced to rethink its supply chain. The global chip shortage added further pressure, costing Apple billions in revenue. But after the company switched to designing more chip components in-house, sales picked up. And Apple finished the year with a gargantuan $94 billion in profits—outperforming every other U.S. company on that front. Apple also gained significant market share in the U.S. personal computing market with its Mac lineup, bringing in a record $37.4 billion in sales. In entertainment, the company made headlines at the Oscars after Apple TV+ became the first streaming service to win the coveted Best Picture award, for its coming-of-age drama CODA. Apple remained the big dog of the Trillion Dollar Club, too: Its market valuation briefly topped $3 trillion in January 2022, though by May it had receded to a mere $2.7 trillion—still higher than any other publicly traded company. Not everything was rosy for CEO Tim Cook: In early 2022, he faced considerable employee backlash for his hefty $99 million pay package in 2021, and many Apple staff were disgruntled with the company’s return-to-office plans.
The revenue threshold for 2022 FORTUNE 500 list was US$6.4 billion, up 19% from last year. In total, FORTUNE 500 companies represent two-thirds of the U.S. gross domestic product (s the standard measure of the value added created through the production of goods and services in a country during a certain period) with $16.1 trillion in revenues (up 17%), $1.84 trillion in profits (up 114%), $37 trillion in market value (up 13%), and employ 29.7 million people worldwide. By the way, 44 companies on the 2022 FORTUNE 500 are led by women CEOs—an all-time high.
Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today
