Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
5 Largest U.S. Companies by Revenue 1-28-25
Tue, 28 Jan 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker explores the five largest U.S. companies by revenue—Walmart, Amazon, Apple, UnitedHealth Group, and Berkshire Hathaway.
Chapter 1: What are the five largest U.S. companies by revenue?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. So today's discussion is the five largest companies by revenues in the U.S. And so we're to go through these pretty quickly. It is fascinating to see how many of these companies have stayed up there for a very long time. They're all at 370 to 400 billion plus and all tracking it much higher than that.
Chapter 2: How does Walmart rank among the largest companies?
Walmart's at the 650, 700. Amazon's a little bit below that. Then Apple, then United, then Berkshire Hathaway. But here's where we're at. And it doesn't seem like any of these are really slowing down. Walmart's number one in the five largest companies by revenues in the U.S., Amazon's number two. We're a direct investor in Amazon.
Chapter 3: What is Amazon's current position in the market?
Most things we invest in are through the S&P 500 index, but we love to watch these things. Amazon's down a little bit today on this AI situation with China and DeepSeek. You'll get this on Tuesday, but that's what's going on there. Apple, number three, just keeps on rocking and rolling through all these different changes, all these different things.
Chapter 4: How is Apple performing in comparison to its competitors?
It's back to the number one market cap company today as NVIDIA has taken it on the nose and it's down to about $3 trillion. Apple's number one, Microsoft's number two, and then NVIDIA's down to number three.
Chapter 5: What recent changes have affected NVIDIA's market cap?
the fourth largest company by revenues united health group and right behind that cvs health and fascinating to see these two juggernauts right there um united very heavily obviously in the insurance business but also the provider business cvs which is right after it but but not in the top five Heavy in the pharmacy business, the PPM business, and the Aetna insurance business.
United has seemed to traverse a lot of this better than others, but also starting to struggle some, too, because of its earnings and everything else. And then finally, number five is Berkshire Hathaway. And again, Berkshire Hathaway, amazing what Warren Buffett has built and still building. The guy's 99%. What an American hero. What a fascinating guy to watch. God bless him.
I can't tell you enough how big a fan we are of what he's done over the long run. If I was that good a buy and hold investor, I would be just rich, rich, rich. And, you know, like there's an old song from Fiddler on the Roof. If I were a rich man, if I invest like Warren Buffett, I would be that rich man. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Great.
What great fun. And thank you for listening. Send us ideas. 773-766-5322. Thank you very, very much.