To give you a sense of Wal-Mart’s unprecedented size, consider the following information, based on Fortune magazine’s 500 Biggest Corporations. Wal-Mart had revenues of $287.9 billion last year. That means Wal-Mart has 50% more revenue than General Motors; 63% bigger than Daimler-Chrysler; 88% bigger than General Electric; four times bigger than the U.S. Postal Service; five and half times bigger than Proctor & Gamble; nearly seven times bigger than Time Warner; eight times larger than Microsoft; fourteen times larger than Halliburton; twenty times bigger than U.S. Steel. Fifteen times bigger than McDonalds; In terms of retailers, Wal-Mart has more revenue than the next four largest retailers combined: Carrefour, Home Depot, Tesco, and Kroger. Wal-Mart is three times bigger than the number two retailer, Carrefour, which had $90.4 billion in revenues. Wal-Mart is four times bigger than Home Depot; nearly six times larger than Target; six times larger than Costco; eight times bigger than Lowe’s; eight times bigger than Sears; ten times bigger than Best Buy; eleven times bigger than JC Penney; fifteen times larger than Kmart. Wal-Mart also has far more employees than any other retailer, at 1.7 million workers. Carrefour is #2 for workers, at 430,000, Target has 292,000, and Home Depot 273,000. Measured by profits, Wal-Mart, with $10.2 billion in profits, was number 12, with only half the profits of Exxon Mobil, at $25.3 billion. Wal-Mart was not even in the top 20 companies measured on return on revenue, which is profits as a percentage of revenues, which for Wal-Mart was around 3.5%/
Not only is Wal-Mart oversized, but it is three times larger than the next retailer, and has four times as many employees. Wal-Mart makes about $6,000 in profit per worker, and $169,353 in sales per worker. But Carrefour makes $210,186 in sales per worker, which means the French retailer sells 24% more per worker. Home Depot sells $267,765 per worker, or 58% higher than Wal-Mart. Target makes $170,890 per worker, just slightly higher than Wal-Mart. Out of the top 500 largest corporations in the world, 24 (4.8%) are retailers. The following six retailers are in the top 100 largest corporations in the world: Wal-Mart (1), Carrefour (22), Home Depot (34), Tesco (54), Kroger (67), and Costco (86). In the top 200 corporations, Albertson’s is 105, Walgreen’s 119, Lowe’s 129, Sears 132, Safeway 134, CVS 161, and Best Buy 191.
