Name: Introducing the 2020 Fortune 500 list
Uploaded: 2020-05-15
Duration: 5 min 45 s
Description: Walmart takes the number one spot for the eighth straight year.

[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: The Fortune 500 is a list of the 500 largest US-based public companies by revenue. The revenue threshold for making it on the list this year, $5.7 billion. The total revenue accumulated by companies on the list was $14.2 trillion. Total profits, $1.2 trillion, 7.6% higher than last year. Number one on the list for the eighth straight year is Walmart. JEN WIECZNER: Over the last eight years, where Walmart has been number one on the Fortune 500 list, they've accumulated over $4 trillion in revenue. I mean, they're an industry unto themselves. PHIL WAHBA: Its business in the United States at the Walmart US chain has been booming. Sam's Club has turned around, convincingly. And also, Walmart International has benefited from the company focusing on a few key markets, rather than trying to be present in a greater number of them. SPEAKER: Coming in at number two is Amazon. ANDREW NUSCA: Amazon is called the "everything store," and for good reason. It really does sell everything, and it keeps selling more of everything. Its retail sales, which is the majority of its business, continue to grow. And that is a $67 billion business. SPEAKER: Revenue at the ecommerce giant grew 21%, allowing it to leapfrog Exxon Mobil and Apple. MATT HEIMER: The energy sector as a whole has been suffering for quite a while. And Exxon, as the biggest energy company in the United States, is certainly no exception to that rule. Part of the problem is that for well over a year now, a lot of major oil-producing countries have been pumping out a lot of extra oil, which creates a glut of supply and holds prices down. ANDREW NUSCA: While Amazon is a growth engine that seems to have no limits, Apple is actually seeing the limits of its growth. For years, it was benefiting from fantastic iPhone sales. Those sales are stagnating. The market is saturated for smartphones. And all of its other businesses-- the smart watches and services-- haven't really offset the enormity of the iPhone business. SPEAKER: CVS came in at number 5, up three spots from the previous year. Berkshire Hathaway dropped two spots to number 6. UnitedHealth Group and McKesson both fell one spot to 7 and 8, respectively, while AT&T and AmerisourceBergen held on to spots 9 and 10. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is the most profitable company on the list. MATT HEIMER: The thing that made Berkshire's profits really surge was a huge gain in their investment portfolio. That added something like $54 billion to their total net income. That's not actually realized profits. They didn't sell those stocks and bring that cash in. It's what's called unrealized gains. Essentially, it's an increase in the value of their stock portfolio. SPEAKER: Apple came in second, and Microsoft came in third. 17 companies made their debuts on the Fortune 500 this year, including Uber at number 228, with $14.1 billion in revenue. KRISTEN BELLSTROM: Most people think of Uber as a ridesharing business. That's the core of the company. But for the last few years, we've seen them steadily diversifying and experimenting with other businesses. And the big one for them is Uber Eats. ANDREW NUSCA: The coronavirus pandemic is awful, in a word, for Uber's business. There's a glimmer of hope, and that's its Eats business. Even though people are staying home and not traveling quite nearly as much as they used to, they do want food delivered at home. And so if Uber leans into that, it can probably stem the losses a little bit. SPEAKER: Facebook entered the top 50 for the first time, jumping from 57 to 46, with a 27% gain in revenue. Netflix jumped 33 spots to number 164. JEN WIECZNER: At the end of the year, they had more than 167 million subscribers worldwide. SPEAKER: GE and Boeing each fell 12 spots to their lowest historical rankings on the Fortune 500. KRISTEN BELLSTROM: GE has been struggling for a number of years now. The company is trying to make a turnaround, but they just keep getting hit in different businesses. A bright spot for them, until recently, has been their jet engine business. MATT HEIMER: Boeing has fallen many spots in the Fortune 500 this year, really, because of the fallout from problems with the 737 MAX. Those accidents have essentially led many airlines to suspend their use of the MAX. Airlines stopped taking new deliveries of that plane. SPEAKER: As always, it's hard to predict what next year's list will look like. But with the devastation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 promises to be even harder to predict than usual. ANDREW NUSCA: If your business has strong fundamentals, you're in good shape. If you were teetering on a knife's edge, you're in trouble. PHIL WAHBA: Companies that were good at ecommerce and also having a large fleet of stores will be the winners. JEN WIECZNER: Clearly, the travel sector is going to be really hurt by this pandemic, and probably for a long time. And as a result, oil has also really been hurt even further, even when oil was already cheap. MATT HEIMER: Right now, they have so much oil backed up and stockpiled and in storage that they've had to shut down wells and literally just stop pumping new oil. And even if the economy recovers strongly in the summer and fall, you're still going to see a situation where oil companies are not going to be able to make up for the revenue that they lost this spring. KRISTEN BELLSTROM: One sector that I think is well-positioned is the technology world. We are doing our work online. We are seeing our friends online. We are keeping touch with our family online. Now that we're all living this way, I think that we will continue to to some degree in the future. [MUSIC PLAYING] 

Introducing the 2020 Fortune 500 list

Franchise_Lists

Amazon has taken the number two spot behind Walmart.

Walmart takes the number one spot for the eighth straight year.