In the last edition of Fortune Analytics, two weeks ago, we looked back at how the Fortune 500 changed in 1995, integrating “service” companies (think banks, retailers, utilities) for the first time in a list that previously had featured only “industrial” corporations.
The growth in scope of the ranking means that today, it includes companies across 21 sectors, from Aerospace and Defense to Wholesalers. To drill down deeper and examine the biggest players in these sectors, Fortune today has introduced our first collection of Fortune Sector Leaders rankings.
We’ve highlighted, or reranked, the top companies by annual revenue within 19 of those sectors—the better to show who’s at the top of each field within the business world.
The number of companies, or cutoff, for each Sector Leaders list differs based on the total number of companies in that sector. So for example, there are more financials-sector companies on the Fortune 1000 than there are chemicals-sector companies, so the Financials Sector Leaders includes 50 companies, while Chemicals Sector Leaders features a total of 15. And we did not break out separate Sector Leaders lists for food and drug stores, nor for telecommunications—those two sectors each have only nine companies, which isn’t enough to warrant spinoff rankings, in our view. (Not everyone gets a trophy!)
The Fortune 500 is our iconic brand highlighting America’s largest companies by revenue, but each spring, we actually publish a Fortune 1000. You might think of the Fortune 500 as the tip of the iceberg, with the rest of the 1000 looming underneath. Many of the companies that rank No. 501–1000 in any given year are waiting in the wings to crash into the main list and usurp their competitors. All of this is to say: Many of the Sector Leaders are companies that did not crack the Fortune 500 this year, but still merit being featured on a Fortune list.
The numbers to know
19… The number of Fortune Sector Leaders lists Fortune published, highlighting 19 of the sectors that Fortune 1000 companies belong to.
21… The total number of sectors across all Fortune 1000 companies.
70… The total number of industries across all Fortune 1000 companies. For our purposes, sectors are broad categories that each include a number of industries.
163… The number of companies on the 2024 Fortune 1000 list that belong to the financials sector—the sector with the most companies.
$3.7 trillion… The combined annual revenue of the 50 companies on the Fortune Sector Leaders: Financials (the highest combined revenue figure of any sector).
15… The number of Fortune Sector Leaders lists that include companies which fell between No. 501–1000 on the 2024 Fortune 1000.
No. 135… The 2024 Fortune 500 rank of Visa. Visa is the lowest-ranking Fortune 500 company to be a No. 1 on its sector list (Fortune Sector Leaders: Business Services).
No. 753… The 2024 Fortune 1000 rank of Crocs. Crocs is the lowest-ranking Fortune 1000 company to make a sector list (Fortune Sector Leaders: Apparel).
The big picture
The Fortune Sector Leaders lists make it easy to see, at a glance, how companies rank by annual revenue among their peers. They also offer a sense of the size and reach of each sector on the Fortune 1000. The number of Sector Leaders highlighted per category—10, 15, 20, 25, or 50—gives a sense of scale as to the raw number of companies that belong to that sector. And combined revenues and profits totals, listed on the landing page for each Sector Leaders ranking—provide another means of gauging the weight each sector carries in the American economy.
Deeper takeaways
Financials reap revenues, but tech reaps profits
The biggest Sector Leaders list by combined revenues is Financials, at $3.7 trillion, followed by the Health Care Sectors Leaders list, with $3.1 trillion in revenues. Both of these figures reflect the sum of revenues for the 50 largest companies in their respective sectors. Retailing Sector Leaders comes in third, with $2.7 trillion in combined revenues across 50 companies.
Profits, as is always the case with the Fortune 500/Fortune 1000, tell a different story. Tech is the most profitable sector, and the Technology Sector Leaders raked in $453 billion in profits across 50 companies. That group’s revenue was $2.4 trillion (fourth-largest of the Sectors Leaders in combined revenues).
The Sector Leaders list for Motor Vehicles and Parts features just 10 companies, but their combined revenues are $612 billion. And $612 billion happens to be the exact combined revenues of another sector, transportation. The Transportation Sector Leaders includes 25 companies, however. As for profits? Transportation generated $39 billion, while Motor Vehicles and Parts Sector Leaders generated $32 billion. The implication: At least last year, companies in Motor Vehicles and Parts were more efficient generators of sales and earnings than Transportation companies were.
The Fortune 1000 offers more slicing and dicing
On the Explore the List page for the Fortune 500 list, you can get even more granular. You can not only filter the Fortune 1000 by sector to see exactly where on the overall list each of the Sector Leaders landed, but you can also filter further, by any of the Fortune 1000’s 70 industries.
For example, the Financials sector is led by Berkshire Hathaway, which is No. 5 on the overall list this year. But the industry it falls within is “Insurance: Property and Casualty (Stock).” That’s just one of four insurance industries the list is broken down into.
You can also filter by sector for past years of the Fortune 1000 in order to get a sense of how Sector Leaders rankings of yesterday would have looked. While Fannie Mae was the third-biggest financials-sector company by revenue in 2019, for example, it’s fifth-biggest in 2024. Bank of America and Citigroup are No. 3 and No. 4 on the Financials Sector Leaders list for 2024. Banks, as I mentioned in this newsletter on June 4 when we published the Fortune 1000, are surging as of late for a slew of reasons, sustained high interest rates being a major one.
I’ll be back in your inboxes on Monday, Aug. 5, with an edition of Fortune Analytics about the 2024 Fortune Global 500 list, which is slated to publish that morning. See you then.
Lydia Belanger
Director of Production, Fortune
lydia.belanger@fortune.com