Big Year for the 500
By now it is scarcely news that 1976 was a banner year for big companies--but just how good it was became a bit clearer last week when FORTUNE published its annual directory of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations. Specifically, by one important measure of profitability it was the best year since 1968. Aggregate sales of the 500 rose 12.2%, to $971 billion; profits climbed much faster, increasing 30.4%, to $49.4 billion. That meant that the median corporate blue-blood kept 4.6-c- of every sales dollar as net income, a seemingly modest profit margin but one that had not been matched in eight years.
Some other measures of prosperity: the billion-dollar club gained 24 new members; 227 companies reported 1976 sales of $1 billion or more. Of these, 36 topped $5 billion, nine more than the year before. Only twelve of the 500 lost money, v. 28 in 1975. Biggest loser: Rohr Industries. It dropped $52.1 million, mostly in its rail-transit-equipment business, which it plans to get out of.
Auto companies did best of all; the four in the list raised their median profit by 138.5%, despite another huge loss for American Motors. General Motors regained its historic role as the No. 1 profitmaker,* topping Exxon $2.9 billion to $2.6 billion, and Ford bumped Texaco out of third place in sales, $28.8 billion to $26.5 billion. Oil companies, however, did well too. Exxon led in sales for the third straight year, with $48.6 billion; Gulf Oil (sales: $16.5 billion) knocked IBM ($16.3 billion) out of seventh place, and Shell ($9.2 billion) displaced U.S. Steel ($8.6 billion) as No. 13. Indeed, nine of the top 17 slots were filled by oil companies.
Ten companies made the 500 list for the first time. The most spectacular rise was that of Norin, a Florida insurance and real estate company, which rocketed out of nowhere to No. 324 on a 1,928% increase in its sales, to $586 million. Though Norin made some gains in its basic business, it got its biggest lift by acquiring Maple Leaf Mills, one of Canada's largest food and grain processors.
* American Telephone & Telegraph, which earned even more, is classified by FORTUNE as a utility and thus is not on the 500 list.
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