Walmart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) has regained its spot at the top of the Fortune 500 listings of America’s biggest companies, after a year in second place.
With a sales jump of 5.9 percent in 2012, the retailer replaced Exxon Mobil (Irving, Texas), which returned to the runner-up position.
Other retailers in the Top 50 of the annual listing included:
Apple (Cupertino, Calif.), jumping from 17th to 6th – “bigger than ever,” says Fortune.
CVS Caremark (Woonsocket, R.I), 13th – took advantage of rival Walgreen’s lapsed contract with prescription benefits manager Express Scripts.
Costco Wholesale (Issaquah, Wash.), 22nd – much-admired company got some bad press when it paid out a special dividend (for which it had to borrow $3.5 billion) at the end of 2012 to mitigate the 2013 tax rate hike.
Kroger (Cincinnati), 23rd – sales rose and earnings more than doubled at the nation’s largest grocery chain.
Home Depot (Atlanta), 34th – put the brakes on its aggressive overseas expansion efforts, closing all seven big box stores in China.
Target (Minneapolis, 36th) – inched up two spots in the Fortune 500 this year, as the gradual economic recovery continued.
Walgreen (Deerfield, Ill.), 37th – Revenue and profit fell in 2012 as the drugstore chain struggled to win back customers it lost after a lengthy contract dispute with the prescription benefit provider Express Scripts. So far, 2013 is shaping up to be much brighter.