Fortune Global 500

The corporations on our annual list of the world’s largest companies showed their muscle in 2022, delivering record-high aggregate revenues of $41 trillion. But the Fortune Global 500 has been anything but static, as technological change and scientific breakthroughs threaten established leaders and elevate new winners. Walmart remains No. 1 for the 10th consecutive year, while Saudi Aramco, which grew its revenues by 51%, claims the No. 2 spot (up from No. 6 last year). In another shift from the previous year, aggregate revenues of Fortune Global 500 companies in the U.S. ($13 trillion) exceeded that of Greater China.

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The Top Ten

Walmart

Prev. #1

Retailing

With $611.3 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year, Walmart tops the Fortune Global 500 for the 10th year in a row. The big-box retailer and growing e-commerce giant saw revenues rise 6.7% year over year, an increase of $38.5 billion. In an effort to expand its health care business, Walmart inked a 10-year deal with insurance provider UnitedHealth to offer medical services in an initial 15 stores, along with a co-branded Medicare plan in Georgia. In November 2022 Walmart agreed to a $3.1 billion settlement related to the role its pharmacies allegedly played in overprescribing painkillers during the opioid epidemic. The company did not admit to any liability. Walmart’s digital advertising business grew 30% in 2022 to $2.7 billion; as its e-commerce platform grows, it’s looking to compete with other e-commerce players for advertisers’ digital spend

Saudi Aramco

+4 spotsPrev. #6

Energy

The state-owned oil behemoth jumped up four spots from our previous year’s list, increasing its revenue by 51%. It raked in about $159 billion in profits in 2022, the largest earnings grab among any of the firms in the Global 500—and the most profitable year in history for a publicly traded company. Saudi Aramco, like all large-scale fossil fuel producers, saw its revenue rise as oil supply tightened in 2022, partly because of the war in Ukraine. OPEC oil prices rose to a high of about $122 a barrel in June 2022; they had fallen to about $80 by July 2023. In October 2022, the oil giant unveiled a $1.5 billion sustainability fund as well as plans to build a carbon-capture-and-storage facility. Despite activist outcry over the environmental impact of oil and gas consumption, Aramco continues to invest the majority of its profits in fossil fuel production. As of December 2022, it produced 12 million barrels of crude oil a day; it has said it plans to increase production capacity to 13 million barrels a day by 2027.

State Grid

Prev. #3

Energy

The Chinese-government-owned power company, which meets about 80% of China’s electricity needs, reported increases of about 15% in both in revenue and profit in 2022. Power use in the nation (population: 1.41 billion) grew 3.6% that year, and State Grid spent about $75 billion to improve its energy grid. To reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, however, the Chinese state will have to spend as much as $136 billion to upgrade its grid, according to BloombergNEF. To increase the ability of its two giant electric utility companies, State Grid and China Southern Grid, to invest more in upgrades, the Chinese government changed the structure of power transmission and distribution fees in May 2023. The changes are expected to help boost both companies’ revenue.

Amazon

-2 spotsPrev. #2

Retailing

The e-commerce giant fell two spots on this year's Global 500: Revenue growth, at 9% year over year, was the slowest in Amazon’s history as a public company to date. Amazon swung from a hefty profit in 2021 to a $2.7 billion loss in 2022. Slowing growth in e-commerce and in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division contributed to the slump. CEO Andy Jassy said in April 2023 that he anticipated a “pending deluge” in spending on A.I. and machine learning that would revive growth at AWS. The company announced layoffs of about 27,000 employees in 2023, with cuts concentrated in cloud computing and human resources. The company closed its physical bookstores and other retail shops in March 2022 to focus on other store formats. In July 2022 Amazon announced that it would pay $3.5 billion to acquire primary care provider One Medical, adding the company to its growing health care services portfolio.

China National Petroleum

-1 spotPrev. #4

Energy

The state-owned fossil fuel firm saw modest growth in 2022 compared to international oil juggernauts such as Saudi Aramco or Exxon Mobil. Still, while revenue only grew about 17% from 2021, profits more than doubled, jumping to almost $22 billion amid a global tightening in oil supply, partly because of the Ukraine war. PetroChina, the oil and fossil fuel subsidiary of China National Petroleum, announced in August 2022 that it would delist itself from the New York Stock Exchange, amid ongoing tension between the U.S. and China over the former’s insistence on better access to Chinese firms’ financial data. China’s largest oil and natural gas producer installed 1,200 megawatts of wind and solar power in 2022. The company said that it is on pace to reach its goal of generating 7% of its energy production through non-fossil fuels by 2025.

Sinopec Group

-1 spotPrev. #5

Energy

China’s second-largest state-owned fossil fuel company dropped one spot on the Global 500. Sinopec, which specializes in refining crude oil into a variety of consumer products, logged a 17% increase in revenue from 2021, a smaller jump than what other international oil and gas companies such as Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil saw during a year of high oil prices. The fossil fuel refiner saw its net profit decrease by almost 7% from 2021, as the total sales volume of oil products dropped about 6% amid China’s severe COVID-19 restrictions. The company projects a stronger 2023.

ExxonMobil Holdings

+5 spotsPrev. #12

Energy

Riding a global windfall for the gas industry—in part the result of trade disruptions between Russia and Europe because of the war in Ukraine—America's largest publicly traded oil and gas company saw a 45% increase in revenue in 2022 and earned $56 billion in profits. The company’s share price hit an intraday peak of $119 in February 2023, a record high since the two oil powerhouses, Exxon and Mobil, merged in 1999. After activist investors successfully won three seats on the oil company's board in 2021, the energy giant eventually committed $17 billion to low-carbon initiatives from 2022 to 2027. The company has continued to invest in fossil fuel production, increasing its output of crude oil, natural gas liquids, bitumen, and synthetic oil by 3% in 2022 compared with 2021.

Apple

-1 spotPrev. #7

Technology

The maker of personal computers, tablets, and other devices derived particularly strong gains from its smartphones and entertainment products. Apple brought in $99.8 billion in profit last year, a record for a U.S. Fortune 500 company. The iPhone 14 lineup drew consumers after its September 2022 release, contributing to Apple’s 1.5% year-on-year growth in iPhone sales. Streaming offerings including Apple Music and Apple TV+ also drove revenue growth, as services sales hit a record of $20.9 billion in the first three months of 2023. Apple has been eyeing India, where it opened its first store in April 2023, as a market to propel iPhone sales and provide a manufacturing boost.

Shell

+6 spotsPrev. #15

Energy

Europe’s largest energy company climbed three ranks after it reported a 41% increase in revenue in 2022 and more than doubled its profit amid high oil and gas prices caused, in part, by the war in Ukraine. After Russia cut off Shell's natural gas pipelines to Europe, the energy giant, which is headquartered in London, had an especially bumper year for liquified natural gas, a state in which gas is condensed and easier to transport. The company's reporting category that includes liquified natural gas earnings skyrocketed almost 176% from 2021. Chief executive Ben van Beurden, the fossil fuel giant’s leader for about nine years, stepped down in January 2023, and Wael Sawan, a decades-long veteran at the company, was promoted to CEO. Of the $25 billion Shell put aside for capital improvements in 2022, it invested $12.5 billion into its oil business, while allocating $4.3 billion to low-carbon energy projects.

UnitedHealth Group

+1 spotPrev. #11

Health Care

The health insurance and health care services provider brought in $324.2 billion in revenue in 2022, making it the largest company in the U.S. health care sector. As of the end of Q1 2023, UnitedHealthcare, the company’s insurance arm, served nearly 2 million more people than a year earlier, for a total of 52.9 million. Revenue per consumer served in UnitedHealth’s Optum health services division increased 34% in Q1 2023 over the same quarter a year earlier. In March 2023, the U.S. Justice Department dropped an appeal that challenged UnitedHealth Group’s $8 billion acquisition of data analytics company Change Healthcare.