Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. remains the largest company in the country, topping the Fortune 500 list for the third straight year, the magazine said Thursday.
Wal-Mart had revenue of $485.7 billion in its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, more than $100 billion ahead of No. 2 Exxon Mobil of Irving, Texas, which had revenue of $382.6 billion last year.
Chevron, based in San Ramon, Calif., was third with $203.8 billion in revenue last year. Berkshire Hathaway of Omaha, Neb., Warren Buffet's conglomerate of companies, was fourth with $194.7 billion in revenue. General Motors of Detroit was fifth with $155.9 billion in revenue.
It was the eighth time in the past 10 years and the 11th time overall that Wal-Mart has been ranked No. 1. Wal-Mart also is the largest company in the world.
"If it were a country, Wal-Mart's sales would rank it 28th in the world in gross domestic product, just behind Norway and ahead of Austria," Fortune said. "The company today has around 11,000 stores in 27 countries and 2.2 million employees, making it the world's largest employer after the U.S. Department of Defense and the Chinese army."
Wal-Mart's No. 1 sales item is bananas, of which it sells 1 billion pounds a year, Fortune said.
Wal-Mart will hold its annual shareholders meeting today in Fayetteville.
The presence of Wal-Mart in Northwest Arkansas has had a major impact on that region of the state and the state as a whole.
Wal-Mart employs more than 50,000 workers in Arkansas and supports another 41,000 jobs of its suppliers in Arkansas, the company says on its website. There are 132 Wal-Mart stores in Arkansas.
There are 1,584 vendors to Wal-Mart who have located offices near Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, said Cameron Smith of Cameron Smith & Associates in Rogers, an executive search firm that staffs the Wal-Mart suppliers in Northwest Arkansas.
Those vendors and suppliers employ more than 7,000 people who live and work within 25 miles of the headquarters office, Smith said.
"When you talk about the success of Wal-Mart, it really permeates everything about Northwest Arkansas," said Kathy Deck, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. "The region has depended on Wal-Mart to be the base to attract all that vendor community. The corporate headquarters of Wal-Mart is really the core of the success of Northwest Arkansas. And it has driven so many other companies and amenities to take advantage of it being here."
There are six other Arkansas companies on the Fortune 500 list besides Wal-Mart.
Tyson Foods of Springdale ranked No. 83 with revenue of $37.6 billion in 2014. The year before, Tyson had ranked No. 93. One reason it improved was because of its acquisition of Hillshire Farms last year.
Murphy USA of El Dorado ranked No. 202 with $15.3 billion in revenue, down from No. 175 in 2013.
El Dorado-based Murphy Oil ranked No. 350 with $8.3 billion in revenue, up from No. 470 in 2013.
Little Rock-based retailer Dillard's ranked No. 400 with $6.8 billion in revenue, down from 386th in 2013.
Trucking firm J.B. Hunt Transport Services of Lowell was No. 434 on the list with $6.2 billion in revenue, up from No. 454 in 2013.
Communications firm Windstream Holdings of Little Rock ranked No. 452 last year with $5.8 billion in revenue, down from No. 429 in 2013.
"It is a feather in our cap to have those prominent corporations in our state," said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
The economic impact of those companies is significant, Pakko said.
"The fact that they have headquarters [in Arkansas], they have operations, employees and executives here and the salaries paid to those workers contributes to economic activity," Pakko said.
No other area of the country has a comparable "location quotient" of headquarters jobs as Northwest Arkansas with its three Fortune 500 companies, Deck said.
"There is an average number of headquarters jobs for every metro in the country," Deck said. "That means that Northwest Arkansas has the highest concentration anywhere in the country. One reason is because we're a relatively small place but we have these three Fortune 500 companies headquartered in an area of 500,000 people."
This is Fortune's 61st listing of the 500 largest companies in the country, beginning in 1955. The Fortune 500 companies account for $12.5 trillion in revenues, $945 billion in earnings, $17 billion in market value and employ 26.8 million people worldwide, Fortune said.
There were 26 new entrants on this year's list, including Netflix at N0. 474, Fortune said.
Business on 06/05/2015