Apple made more money in the last year than any other company in the world, according to the new Fortune 500 rankings. With annual profits of $57.5 billion, no other enterprise came particularly close, with the nearest rival earning about $8 billion less.
This goes a long way toward explaining why Apple remains the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world.
Apple profits beat Big Tech rivals
Taking a look at other tech firms, Apple’s old rival Microsoft was in fifth place in the rankings with $44.2 billion. Google’s parent company Alphabet was in 7th place with $40.3 billion, while Facebook was in 10th place with $29.1 billion in annual profits, according to Fortune.
Samsung Electronics was in 15th place by taking in $22.1 billion, and Amazon was next with $21.3 billion in annual profits.
Note that this is not some ratio, like profits vs. revenue or profits per share. It’s exactly how much each company declared in profit during their respective fiscal years ended on or before March 31, 2021.
Apple: Other measures of financial success
The Fortune Global 500 ranks companies by revenue, not just profits. By that measure, Apple is in 6th place, with $260 billion. Walmart is at the top of the pile with $524.0 billion.
As for more of Big Tech, Samsung Electronics is in 15th place in revenue, Alphabet is in 21st place, and Microsoft is in 33rd place. Facebook is way back at 86th place in annual revenue.
Being the world’s most profitable company likely contributes to Apple also being valued by shareholders at $2.4 trillion. That’s more than any other company. In second place there’s Microsoft at $2.15 trillion. Other Big Tech companies follow with Google at $1.8 trillion, Amazon at $1.7 trillion and Facebook at $975 billion.
