Cargill introduced a limited employee stock ownership plan in the ’90s that allowed some family members to cash out. However, roughly 100 descendants of the founders still own around 90% of the stock, worth some $52 billion as of the last official tally. Generally, they’ve been content to plow profits back into the business and watch the value of their asset grow. Dividends are calculated on a rolling two-year cycle and paid at a rate that Page describes as de minimis. “The capital’s not only private,” he says, “it’s patient and permanent.” With $119.5 billion in revenues in its most recent fiscal year, ended May 31, Cargill is bigger by half than its nearest publicly held rival in the food production industry, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500).
America’s Largest Private Companies: Cargill Is Back At No. 1
If Cargill were public, it would have ranked No. 18 on this year’s Fortune 500, between AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) and IBM (IBM, Fortune 500). Over the past decade, a period when the S&P 500’s revenues have grown 31%, Cargill’s sales have more than doubled. We’ve highlighted, or reranked, the top companies by annual revenue within 19 of those sectors—the better to show who’s at the top of each field within the business world. Airbnb is on the list for a second time, but it looks unlikely that the company will stay for another year. Ranked at No. 90 with 2019 revenues of $4.8 billion, the company filed to go public on November 16. The two companies have been mainstays of Forbes’ private companies list.
Tight Family Control
This total puts Cargill in the top 15 on the Fortune 500 list of highest revenue-producing companies. Medical supply outfit Medline made a splash earlier this year when it announced it was selling a majority stake to a group of private equity firms in one of the largest ever leveraged buyouts. Medline remains a private company and is ranked No.16 with revenues of $17.5 billion. The Fortune Sector Leaders lists make it easy to see, at a glance, how companies rank by annual revenue among their peers. They also offer a sense of the size and reach of each sector on the Fortune 1000.
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Its customers are in the retail, food service sector and beverage industry. In 1979, Cargill entered the meat-processing business with the purchase of beef processor MBPXL (later Excel).[26] The division expanded into turkey, food service and food distribution businesses and is now known as Cargill Meat Solutions. Profits, as is always the case with the Fortune 500/Fortune 1000, tell a different story.
Cargill Financial Summary
Cargill also provides risk management, commodities trading and transportation services. Descendants of William Cargill and his son-in-law John MacMillan have owned common equity in the company for over 140 years. Returnees to the list include Massachusetts-based supermarket chain Big Y, ranked at No. 210, and construction firm Hoffman Corp. of Portland, Oregon at No. 205. Both companies were last on the list in 2008, when the cutoff was $1 billion in revenues, but fell out of the rankings when the threshold was raised to $2 billion in 2009.
He was also the architect of the company’s strategy of internationalism.[17] He opened the company’s first Canadian, European and Latin American offices in 1928, 1929, and 1930. He was also noted for his involvement in the controversial commercial rapprochement between the U.S. is cargill a fortune 500 company and the Soviet Union.[17] During this time, Cargill saw both record profits and major cash crunches. Cargill was founded in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill when he bought a grain-flat house in Conover, Iowa.[15] A year later William was joined by his brother Sam, forming W.
Our data sources include voluntary disclosures by companies, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and estimates from Forbes researchers and outside sources. Forbes’ list of largest private companies in America includes only firms with revenue greater than $2 billion in the most recent fiscal https://www.1investing.in/ year. Many businesses like the freedom from quarterly earnings expectations and reduced obligations to Sarbanes-Oxley reporting requirements. Forbes’ list of largest private companies in America includes U.S. based firms with revenue greater than $2 billion in the most recent fiscal year.
- Cargill’s roots lie in the ancient, risky business of buying, storing, and selling grain.
- He was also noted for his involvement in the controversial commercial rapprochement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.[17] During this time, Cargill saw both record profits and major cash crunches.
- The biggest gainer this year was Colonial Group, which moves up 73 spots to No. 126.
- That includes Oxbow, the petroleum coke processing company that fell off in 2020 and returns at No. 224 with revenue of $2.7 billion.
It’s been run by its billionaire chairman and CEO Charles Koch since 1967. Cargill also has a large financial services arm, which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company. In 2003, it split off a portion of its financial operations into Black River Asset Management, a hedge fund with about $10 billion of assets and liabilities. It previously owned two-thirds of the shares of The Mosaic Company (sold off in 2011), a producer and marketer of concentrated phosphate and potash crop nutrients. Cargill is one of the largest private companies in the United States. Since its founding in 1865 by William W. Cargill, the company has maintained its status as a private company mainly owned by family heirs.
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To drill down deeper and examine the biggest players in these sectors, Fortune today has introduced our first collection of Fortune Sector Leaders rankings. The company is a leading player in global food supply chains and has 160,000 employees in 70 countries. The home rental company went public via an IPO worth $47 billion in December 2020 after spending just two years on the list. Joining Airbnb as public companies are Petco Animal Supplies, Vizio and Jo-Ann Stores. Vizio filed to go public back in 2015 but withdrew the following year when it agreed to be sold to a Chinese company. That deal ultimately fell through and Vizio remained private until March of this year.
William Cargill died in 1909, creating a fiscal crisis for the company. MacMillan worked to resolve the credit issues and to force his brother-in-law William S. Cargill out of the company. The current owners are descended from John MacMillan’s two sons, John H. MacMillan Jr., and Cargill MacMillan Sr., and his youngest brother-in-law, Austen S. Cargill I. Andrea Murphy is the Statistics Editor who oversees lists like the Global 2000 and America’s Largest Private Companies. Based in Massachusetts, she joined Forbes in 2000 and can be reached at Newly formed Ultimate Kronos Group joins the list at No. 138 with sales of $3.3 billion.
Archer Daniels Midland has performed better with a five-year loss of 32% and a 10-year gain of 9%. Cargill faced pressure from the shareholders and charitable trusts that owned stock in the company. The company decided to spin off its 64% ownership of The Mosaic Company—one of the largest fertilizer companies in the world. This move allowed shareholders to trade Cargill stock for Mosaic shares. In the early days, the company allowed the family to have total control of Cargill.
In addition to the 11 newcomers, another four companies returned to the list after dropping off in prior years. That includes Oxbow, the petroleum coke processing company that fell off in 2020 and returns at No. 224 with revenue of $2.7 billion. Its founder and CEO William (Bill) Koch is the brother of Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, which ranks No. 2 on the list. He started Oxbow after selling his stake in Koch Industries to his brothers Charles and David (d. 2019) in 1983 for $470 million. Bill Koch and his brother Frederick Koch (d. 2020) initiated a lengthy legal battle over the payout amount that was finally settled confidentially in 2001. Also making its debut is Sazerac, the liquor company owned by billionaire William Goldring, which debuts at No. 207 with estimated revenue of $3 billion.
Furniture maker Haworth was affected by the downturn in the office furniture market and revenues fell by 19% to $1.8 billion in 2020. Revenues at hospitality company Delaware North fell by 61% to $1.45 billion due to cancellations of sporting events and a slowdown in business at airports—two areas where it operates. Oxbow, a coal marketing and production company owned by William Koch—younger brother of Koch Industries Chairman Charles Koch—fell off the list because its revenues fell below the $2 threshold. Drummond, another coal company, also dropped off due to declining revenues, as falling global demand for coal pushed prices down.
In 1875, Cargill moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin, and their brother James joined the business. La Crosse was strategically located on the Mississippi near the junctions of the La Crosse River, Dubuque, and Southern Minnesota divisions of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. Cargill remains a family-owned business, as the descendants of the founder (from the Cargill and MacMillan families) own over 90% of it.[12] In January 2023, Brian Sikes was appointed to serve as president and CEO. Accounting firms Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young were taken off the list because all three have global headquarters overseas. Later in Hanoi, I tell Ngoc all about my visit to Baria-Vungtau province.
You can also filter by sector for past years of the Fortune 1000 in order to get a sense of how Sector Leaders rankings of yesterday would have looked. While Fannie Mae was the third-biggest financials-sector company by revenue in 2019, for example, it’s fifth-biggest in 2024. Bank of America and Citigroup are No. 3 and No. 4 on the Financials Sector Leaders list for 2024. Banks, as I mentioned in this newsletter on June 4 when we published the Fortune 1000, are surging as of late for a slew of reasons, sustained high interest rates being a major one. 70… The total number of industries across all Fortune 1000 companies. For our purposes, sectors are broad categories that each include a number of industries.
“Clearly the volatility can be an opportunity,” he says, acknowledging that sharp price swings can play to Cargill’s vaunted trading expertise. Then he adds, “The big part of our business is the physical handling of tens of millions of tons of food. If we believe the world is headed toward a varied weather pattern, those services become more important.” The stock performances of both companies have been rather lackluster over the last five- and 10-year periods, which might give Cargill pause to go public. Bunge shares fell 58% in the last five years and dropped 44% in the last 10 years.
Founded in 1921, today the firm is run by Christian Demere, the fourth generation of the family to head the company. With Cargill’s record-setting revenue announced earlier this year, the company has once again claimed the top spot in the annual Forbes ranking of America’s largest private companies released Tuesday. This year 19 companies didn’t qualify for inclusion because of falling revenues, an acquisition, or a public offering. Ten firms fell off because declining revenues put them below the below $2 billion list threshold.
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