Markets
The Top 100 Companies: Revenue vs. Profit
The Top 100 Companies: Revenue vs. Profit
Just over a month ago, we published a very tidy data visualization that summed up the top 50 companies in the world by revenue, based on data from Forbes.
But, just looking at revenue numbers doesn’t give a full picture on how these companies compare – and many investors care much more about a different performance metric: profit.
Thankfully, today’s data visualization from Ishtyaq Habib shows the top 100 biggest companies by market value, but uses circles to represent both the revenue and profit for each company. There’s also an interactive version of the same chart here as well, which highlights the specific numbers for each company highlighted.
Apple = A Money-Making Machine
The first noticeable difference in this version?
It’s that Apple is unparalleled in its ability to make money. In fact, Apple’s 2016 profit of $45 billion is far bigger than any other company, including Berkshire Hathaway ($24 billion), JPMorgan Chase ($24 billion), Wells Fargo ($22 billion), Alphabet ($19 billion), Samsung ($19 billion), Toyota ($17 billion), Johnson & Johnson ($16 billion), or Walmart ($14 billion).
The only companies that can compare with Apple were Chinese banks like ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, or China Construction Bank, but in many ways these state-owned enterprises are on an entirely different playing field, anyways.
Also impressive: Apple’s profits are bigger than the revenues of massive companies like Coca-Cola ($41.5 billion) or Facebook ($27.6 billion).
Margins, Schmargins
Unfortunately, not every company can make a 21% profit margin on $217 billion of revenue like Apple.
Other organizations need to rely on razor-thin margins and volume to make things work. Walmart only brought in $14 billion of profit off of a whopping $485 billion of revenue – a margin of just 2.8%. Meanwhile, fast-growing Amazon was in a similar boat with margins of 1.7%, largely provided by its wildly successful AWS service.
Lastly, it is also worth noting that some on the list did not make a margin at all. These are mostly companies that are suffering from the challenges of down cycles in natural resources. Chevron and mining giant Glencore, for example, were two of the Top 100 Companies that both lost money in 2016, while BP essentially broke even.
Markets
Ranked: The World’s 50 Top Countries by GDP, by Sector Breakdown
This graphic shows GDP by country, broken down into three main sectors: services, industry, and agriculture.

Visualized: The Three Pillars of GDP, by Country
Over the last several decades, the service sector has fueled the economic activity of the world’s largest countries. Driving this trend has been changes in consumption, the easing of trade barriers, and rapid advancements in tech.
We can see this in the gross domestic product (GDP) breakdown of each country, which gets divided into three broad sectors: services, industry, and agriculture.
The above graphic from Pranav Gavali shows GDP by country, and how each sector contributes to an economy’s output, with data from the World Bank.
Drivers of GDP, by Country
As the most important and fastest growing component of GDP, services make up almost 60% of GDP in the world’s 50 largest countries. Following this is the industrial sector which includes the production of raw goods.
Below, we show how each sector contributes to GDP by country as of 2021:
Country | Services (% GDP) | Industry (% GDP) | Agriculture (% GDP) | Other (% GDP) | GDP (T) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
🇺🇸 U.S. | 77.6 | 17.9 | 1.0 | 3.6 | $22.9 |
🇨🇳 China | 53.5 | 39.3 | 7.2 | 0.0 | $16.9 |
🇯🇵 Japan | 69.9 | 28.8 | 1.0 | 0.4 | $5.1 |
🇩🇪 Germany | 62.9 | 26.7 | 0.9 | 9.5 | $4.2 |
🇬🇧 UK | 71.6 | 17.3 | 0.7 | 10.4 | $3.1 |
🇫🇷 France | 70.3 | 16.7 | 1.6 | 11.4 | $2.9 |
🇮🇳 India | 47.9 | 26.1 | 17.3 | 8.7 | $2.9 |
🇮🇹 Italy | 65.0 | 22.7 | 1.9 | 10.4 | $2.1 |
🇨🇦 Canada* | 67.7 | 24.1 | 1.7 | 6.6 | $2.0 |
🇰🇷 South Korea | 57.0 | 32.4 | 1.8 | 8.8 | $1.8 |
🇧🇷 Brazil | 57.8 | 20.2 | 7.5 | 14.6 | $1.6 |
🇦🇺 Australia | 65.7 | 25.5 | 2.3 | 6.5 | $1.6 |
🇷🇺 Russia | 54.1 | 31.8 | 3.9 | 10.3 | $1.6 |
🇪🇸 Spain | 67.4 | 20.4 | 2.6 | 9.6 | $1.4 |
🇲🇽 Mexico | 59.2 | 30.8 | 3.9 | 6.1 | $1.3 |
🇮🇩 Indonesia | 42.8 | 39.8 | 13.3 | 4.1 | $1.2 |
🇮🇷 Iran | 47.3 | 38.0 | 12.4 | 2.3 | $1.1 |
🇳🇱 Netherlands | 69.4 | 17.9 | 1.5 | 11.2 | $1.0 |
🇨🇭 Switzerland | 71.9 | 24.6 | 0.6 | 2.8 | $0.8 |
🇹🇷 Turkiye | 52.8 | 31.1 | 5.5 | 10.6 | $0.8 |
🇹🇼 Taiwan | 60.6 | 38.0 | 1.5 | 0.0 | $0.8 |
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | 46.5 | 44.7 | 2.7 | 6.1 | $0.8 |
🇵🇱 Poland | 56.9 | 27.9 | 2.2 | 13.0 | $0.7 |
🇧🇪 Belgium | 68.8 | 19.6 | 0.7 | 10.9 | $0.6 |
🇸🇪 Sweden | 65.0 | 22.5 | 1.3 | 11.3 | $0.6 |
🇮🇱 Israel | 72.4 | 17.2 | 1.3 | 9.1 | $0.5 |
🇦🇷 Argentina | 52.5 | 23.6 | 7.1 | 16.8 | $0.5 |
🇦🇹 Austria | 62.4 | 25.8 | 1.2 | 10.5 | $0.5 |
🇳🇬 Nigeria | 43.8 | 31.4 | 23.4 | 1.4 | $0.5 |
🇹🇭 Thailand | 56.3 | 35.0 | 8.7 | 0.0 | $0.5 |
🇮🇪 Ireland | 55.4 | 37.8 | 1.0 | 5.8 | $0.5 |
🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 89.7 | 6.0 | 0.1 | 4.3 | $0.4 |
🇩🇰 Denmark | 66.7 | 19.3 | 0.9 | 13.1 | $0.4 |
🇸🇬 Singapore | 70.3 | 24.4 | 0.0 | 5.3 | $0.4 |
🇿🇦 South Africa | 63.0 | 24.5 | 2.5 | 10.0 | $0.4 |
🇵🇭 Philippines | 61.0 | 28.9 | 10.1 | 0.0 | $0.4 |
🇪🇬 Egypt | 52.5 | 31.2 | 11.4 | 4.9 | $0.4 |
🇧🇩 Bangladesh | 51.3 | 33.3 | 11.6 | 3.7 | $0.4 |
🇳🇴 Norway | 51.8 | 36.3 | 1.7 | 10.2 | $0.4 |
🇻🇳 Vietnam | 41.2 | 37.5 | 12.6 | 8.8 | $0.4 |
🇲🇾 Malaysia | 51.6 | 37.8 | 9.6 | 1.1 | $0.4 |
🇦🇪 U.A.E. | 51.6 | 47.5 | 0.9 | 0.0 | $0.4 |
🇵🇰 Pakistan | 52.1 | 18.8 | 22.7 | 6.4 | $0.3 |
🇵🇹 Portugal | 64.7 | 19.6 | 2.2 | 13.5 | $0.3 |
🇫🇮 Finland | 60.3 | 24.1 | 2.3 | 13.4 | $0.3 |
🇨🇴 Colombia | 58.0 | 24.9 | 7.6 | 9.5 | $0.3 |
🇷🇴 Romania | 59.1 | 26.7 | 4.5 | 9.6 | $0.3 |
🇨🇿 Czechia | 58.8 | 30.3 | 1.8 | 9.1 | $0.3 |
🇨🇱 Chile | 54.4 | 31.3 | 3.6 | 10.6 | $0.3 |
🇳🇿 New Zealand* | 65.6 | 20.4 | 5.7 | 8.4 | $0.2 |
Industrial sector includes construction. Agriculture sector includes forestry and fishing. *Data as of 2019.
In the U.S., services make up nearly 78% of GDP. Apart from Hong Kong, it comprises the highest share of GDP across the world’s largest economies. Roughly 80% of American jobs in the private sector are in services, spanning from healthcare and entertainment to finance and logistics.
Like America, a growing share of China’s GDP is from services, contributing to almost 54% of total economic output, up from 44% in 2010. This can be attributed to rising incomes and higher productivity in the sector as the economy has grown and matured, among other factors.
In a departure from the top 10 biggest countries globally, agriculture continues to drive a large portion of India’s GDP. India is the world’s second largest producer of wheat and rice, with agriculture accounting for 44% of the country’s employment.
While the services sector has grown in India, it makes up a greater share in other emerging economies such as Brazil (58%), Mexico (59%), and the Philippines (61%).
Growth Dynamics
Services-led growth has risen faster than manufacturing across many developing nations, underpinned by productivity growth.
This structural shift is seen across economies. In many countries in Africa, for instance, jobs have increasingly moved from agriculture to services and trade, where it now accounts for 42% of jobs.
These growth patterns are supported by rising incomes in developing economies, while innovation in tech is lowering barriers to enabling service growth. As the industrial sector makes up a lower share of trade and economic activity, the service sector is projected to make up 77% of global GDP by 2035.
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