On the evening of July 19, 2018, Fortune Chinese released the latest Fortune Global 500 ranking. 120 Chinese enterprises (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), 126 American enterprises and 52 Japanese enterprises were included in the list.
Fortune magazine ranks the top 500 companies in the world according to their sales revenue every year. The list also publishes the annual profits, total assets, owner's equity, number of employees and other data of these companies. By studying this list, we can understand the latest development trend of the global top 500 enterprises, understand the rise and fall of enterprises, the changes in operating quality such as the rate of return on sales, the rate of return on net assets, and the overall production efficiency, and also reveal the changes in the distribution of large enterprise groups.
In the 2018 ranking list, there is no doubt that Wal Mart ranked first, which has been Wal Mart's champion for five consecutive years. Wal Mart, founded by Sam Walton in Arkansas in 1962, is the largest private employer and chain retailer in the world. It has 65 brands, more than 11700 branches and e-commerce websites in 28 countries. Its revenue in fiscal year 2018 (February 2017 January 2018) reached US $500.3 billion, and the total number of employees worldwide is about 2.3 million.
Wal Mart and three Chinese enterprises - State Grid, Sinopec and PetroChina - continue to rank in the top four of the world's top 500, and their positions remain unchanged. Wal Mart also has the largest number of employees (2.3 million), followed by PetroChina (1.47 million).
Compared with the ranking last year, the threshold (minimum sales revenue) for enterprises to enter the Fortune 500 this year rose from 21.6 billion dollars to 23.6 billion dollars. The total operating revenue of these 500 enterprises was nearly 30 trillion US dollars, up 8.3% year on year; Total profit reached a record $1.88 trillion, up 23% year on year. It can be seen that the profits of these top 500 enterprises are increasing significantly, which also indicates that global enterprises have more abundant funds for investment and M&A in the future, and the world economy is likely to continue to grow.
In 2008, 37 enterprises in Chinese Mainland entered the list. By 2018, 111 enterprises in Chinese Mainland (including Hong Kong enterprises) had entered the ranking list.
American enterprises have always been in the leading position in the Fortune Global 500 list, with the largest number. American enterprises have been far ahead in the two indicators of return on sales and return on net assets.
Compared with American enterprises, Chinese enterprises still have a big gap.
In 2018, there were 111 enterprises in Chinese Mainland (including Hong Kong enterprises), with average sales revenue of US $61 billion, average net assets of US $35 billion, average profit of US $3.1 billion, average sales return of 5.1%, and average return on equity of 8.9%.
In 2018, 126 American enterprises were listed, with average sales revenue of 70.5 billion US dollars, average net assets of 38.1 billion US dollars, average profit of 5.2 billion US dollars, average sales yield of 7.4% and average return on equity of 13.6%.
If the difference between the average number of employees employed by Chinese and American enterprises is taken into account, the gap will be even wider. In 2018, the average number of employees of the US listed companies was 132403, and the average number of employees of the Chinese listed companies was 182637; The per capita sales income of American enterprises is 530000 dollars, while that of Chinese enterprises is only 330000 dollars; The per capita profit of American enterprises is $40000, while that of Chinese enterprises is only $17000.
Although Apple ranked 11th this year, it still tops the profit list. The top 10 Chinese enterprises in the profit list are still the four major banks of industry, construction, agriculture and China.
In the ROE list, Boeing ranked first; The top Chinese companies are Tencent, Country Garden, Huawei, Midea and TSMC.
In this year's Top 500 ranking, British American Tobacco Group has the highest profit margin, with a profit margin of 185%. Among Chinese Mainland companies, Tencent has the highest profit margin, more than 30%.
From the perspective of industry, all listed real estate enterprises are from China. In the field of automobile manufacturing, China has seven companies on the list, and the United States has only General Motors and Ford. Geely is the only private car company on the list in Chinese Mainland.
In the field of construction, CSCEC, China Railway Engineering Corporation, China Railway Construction Corporation, China Communications Construction Corporation, China Power Construction Corporation, Pacific Construction Corporation and other enterprises were included in the list.
It can be seen from the comparison between Chinese and American enterprises that when the United States has entered the post industrialization stage of industrial structure, China is still in the industrialization stage.
As a reference, in 2018, there were no real estate, engineering construction and metal smelting enterprises among the large American companies, but there were many large companies in IT, life health and food related fields; China is in contrast to this. Especially in industries closely related to human life and health, such as health/food wholesale, insurance managed medical care, food production and processing, and entertainment, there are companies from the United States, Europe, Japan, Brazil, and other countries, but no Chinese enterprises are listed.
In addition, the problem of China's banking industry using monopoly position to obtain excess profits has not been solved. The average profits of the eight banks listed in the United States are 9.6 billion US dollars. The average profit of the 10 Chinese banks reached US $17.9 billion, much higher than the profit level of all Chinese companies listed (US $3.1 billion). The total profits of these 10 banks accounted for 50.7% of the total profits of 111 listed companies in Chinese Mainland; By contrast, Bank of America's total profits accounted for only 11.7% of the 126 listed companies in the United States. It should be noted that at the end of June this year, China decided to significantly liberalize market access for foreign banks.