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How the World’s Biggest Companies Have Changed in Just 10 Years

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How the World’s Biggest Companies Have Changed in Just 10 Years

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

At first glance, the business world may seem quite static. The biggest companies today – ones like Apple, Walmart, or Exxon Mobil – will likely also be some of the biggest companies tomorrow. Fast forward a week, a month, or a year, and odds are that they will still be at the top of the food chain.

But fast forward any further, and those odds change considerably. In a decade, there just has to be one bad strategic decision, a missed trend, or a colossal managerial mistake, and you have the next Kodak, Blockbuster, or Sears.

A Changing List

Every year, Fortune publishes a ranking of the world’s top companies by revenue. We compared the 100 highest revenue companies in both 2008 and 2018 to see how much things change in ten years – and the results are pretty astounding.

The most fundamental finding: 43 of the 100 companies on top of today’s list were not there ten years ago. Some of the “new” entries, like Amazon or Huawei, are to be expected – but other companies like Microsoft or Apple are more surprising.

In 2008, for example, Apple was ranked just #337 in global revenue, and today it comes in 11th place.

A Closer Look at the Top 10

The full graphic looks at the Top 100, but let’s zoom in just to the very top.

Here were the top 10 companies in 2008:

Rank (2008)CompanyCountryRevenue
#1WalmartUSA$378.8 billion
#2Exxon MobilUSA$372.8 billion
#3Royal Dutch ShellNetherlands$355.8 billion
#4BPUK$291.4 billion
#5Toyota MotorJapan$230.2 billion
#6ChevronUSA$210.8 billion
#7ING GroupNetherlands$201.5 billion
#8TotalFrance$187.3 billion
#9General MotorsUSA$182.3 billion
#10ConocoPhillipsUSA$178.6 billion

Ten years ago, oil prices were sky-high and the list was dominated with energy names like Total, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. Amazingly, ING Group was the only financial company to make the list in 2008, but it has since fallen to #171 globally.

Let’s jump to the 2018 list:

Rank (2018)CompanyCountryRevenue
#1WalmartUSA$500.3 billion
#2State GridChina$348.9 billion
#3Sinopec GroupChina$327.0 billion
#4China National PetroleumChina$326.0 billion
#5Royal Dutch ShellNetherlands$311.9 billion
#6Toyota MotorJapan$265.2 billion
#7VolkswagenGermany$260.0 billion
#8BPUK$244.6 billion
#9Exxon MobilUSA$244.4 billion
#10Berkshire HathawayUSA$242.1 billion

While the modern list has just as many energy names, half of them are now Chinese companies like State Grid or Sinopec Group. Meanwhile, the staying power – at least in terms of revenue – of companies like Walmart, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP is quite impressive.

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Stocks

Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

We visualize the recent performance of the Magnificent Seven stocks, uncovering a clear divergence between the group’s top and bottom names.

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Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we visualize the year-to-date (YTD) performance of the “Magnificent Seven”, a leading group of U.S. tech stocks that gained prominence in 2023 as the replacement of FAANG stocks.

All figures are as of March 12, 2024, and are listed in the table below.

RankCompanyYTD Change (%)
1Nvidia90.8
2Meta44.3
3Amazon16.9
4Microsoft12
5Google0.2
6Apple-6.7
7Tesla-28.5

From these numbers, we can see a clear divergence in performance across the group.

Nvidia and Meta Lead

Nvidia is the main hero of this show, setting new all-time highs seemingly every week. The chipmaker is currently the world’s third most valuable company, with a valuation of around $2.2 trillion. This puts it very close to Apple, which is currently valued at $2.7 trillion.

The second best performer of the Magnificent Seven has been Meta, which recently re-entered the trillion dollar club after falling out of favor in 2022. The company saw a massive one-day gain of $197 billion on Feb 2, 2024.

Apple and Tesla in the Red

Tesla has lost over a quarter of its value YTD as EV hype continues to fizzle out. Other pure play EV stocks like Rivian and Lucid are also down significantly in 2024.

Meanwhile, Apple shares have struggled due to weakening demand for its products in China, as well as the company’s lack of progress in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

Investors may have also been disappointed to hear that Apple’s electric car project, which started a decade ago, has been scrapped.

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