Amazon to Pass Walmart and Become America’s Largest Company

Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has been the largest public company in the United States for most of the 20th century, having taken the crown from General Motors. Several megacap tech companies have grown fast enough that Walmart was unlikely to keep its lead forever. In the next year, based on total revenue, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) will pass it.

Earlier this week, Yahoo Finance posted, “Yesterday, Amazon posted fourth quarter sales of $187.8 billion, a 10% increase. Revenue from Walmart, whose numbers are due on Feb. 20, is predicted to rise 4% to $180 billion.”

Oddly, commerce was not the sole engine of Amazon’s growth. Its fastest-growing unit is AWS, the world’s largest cloud computing business. Worldwide, AWS has a market share of about 31%. Microsoft’s Azure is second at 20%.

In the most recent quarter, Amazon broke its business into three units. North American revenue was $115.6 billion, and operating revenue was $9.3 billion. International revenue was $43.4 billion, and operating revenue was $1.3 billion. AWS revenue was $28.8 billion, and its operating income was $10.6 billion

The success of the two companies has created some of the richest people in the world. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $249 billion. Walmart founder Sam Walton’s children—Jim, Bob, and Alice—each have a net worth of about $122 billion.

Wall Street thinks more of Amazon’s prospects than of Walmart’s. Amazon has a market cap of $2.43 trillion, while Walmart’s is $813 billion.

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