The World’s 20 Most Profitable Companies

The biggest chunk of the earnings pie is increasingly split by fewer and fewer companies.

In the U.S. for example, about 50% of all profit generated by public companies goes to just 30 companies — back in 1975, it took 109 companies to accomplish the same feat:

This power-law dynamic also manifests itself at a global level — and perhaps it’s little surprise that the world’s most profitable companies generate mind-bending returns that would make any accountant blush.

Which Company Makes the Most Per Day?

Today’s infographic comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it uses data from Fortune to illustrate how much profit top global companies actually rake in on a daily basis.

The 20 most profitable companies in the world are listed below in order, and we’ve also broken the same data down per second:

Rank	Company	Country	Profit per Day	Profit Per Second
#1	Saudi Aramco	Saudi Arabia	$304,039,726	$3,519
#2	Apple	United States	$163,098,630	$1,888
#3	Industrial & Commercial Bank of China	China	$123,293,973	$1,427
#4	Samsung Electronics	South Korea	$109,301,918	$1,265
#5	China Construction Bank	China	$105,475,068	$1,221
#6	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	United States	$88,969,863	$1,030
#7	Alphabet	United States	$84,208,219	$975
#8	Agricultural Bank of China	China	$83,990,411	$972
#9	Bank of America Corp.	United States	$77,115,068	$893
#10	Bank of China	China	$74,589,589	$863

 

The Saudi Arabian Oil Company, known to most as Saudi Aramco, is by far the world’s most profitable company, raking in a stunning $304 million of profits every day. When translated to a more micro scale, that works out to $3,519 per second.

Numbers on an Annual Basis

Bringing in over $300 million per day of profit is pretty hard to comprehend, but the numbers are even more unfathomable when they are annualized.

Rank	Company	Country	Profit
#1	Saudi Aramco	Saudi Arabia	$110,974,500,000
#2	Apple	United States	$59,531,000,000
#3	Industrial & Commercial Bank of China	China	$45,002,300,000
#4	Samsung Electronics	South Korea	$39,895,200,000
#5	China Construction Bank	China	$38,498,400,000
#6	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	United States	$32,474,000,000
#7	Alphabet	United States	$30,736,000,000
#8	Agricultural Bank of China	China	$30,656,500,000
#9	Bank of America Corp.	United States	$28,147,000,000
#10	Bank of China	China	$27,225,200,000

 

On an annual basis, Saudi Aramco is raking in $111 billion of profit per year, and that’s with oil prices sitting in the $50-$70 per barrel range.

To put this number in perspective, take a look at Chevron. The American oil giant is one of the 20 biggest companies on the S&P 500, but it generated just $15 billion in profit in 2018 and currently sits at a $221 billion market capitalization.

That puts Chevron’s profits at roughly 10% of Aramco’s — and if Aramco does IPO at a $2 trillion valuation, that would put Chevron at roughly 10% of its market cap, as well.