This Huge American Company Didn’t Exist a Decade Ago

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Huge American Company Didn’t Exist a Decade Ago

© Courtesy of AbbVie

Rome was not built in a day, and neither are multibillion-dollar corporations. The Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. public companies by revenue is dominated by decades-old and even century-old companies.

Still, there are a handful of exceptions. Every year, new startups are formed and conglomerates are restructured. In some cases, these companies soon report revenues high enough to rank among the largest U.S. companies. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed a range of sources, including the Fortune 500, to identify America’s biggest company that did not exist 10 years ago.

While there have been dozens of notable startups in the past decade, many that might yet make the Fortune 500, every company large enough to rank on this list was formed after a larger company divested some of its business. In these cases, the billions of dollars in annual revenue are largely attributable to the customer base and infrastructure established when the company was part of a larger conglomerate.

It is important to note that while the list includes companies that spun off from larger ones, we did not consider companies formed after a merger.
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Each company on the list of finalists for the top spot is headquartered in the United States, and many have operations across the country and around the world. Here is a list of the largest company by revenue in each state.

Biopharmaceuticals company AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV | ABBV Price Prediction) was founded on Jan. 1, 2013, as a spin-off from Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT). It is the largest American company founded in the past decade. While the new Abbott Laboratories would focus on diagnostic and medical devices, AbbVie was founded to focus on research-based pharmaceuticals. Today, AbbVie’s product lines include the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira (which accounts for 61% of the company’s revenue), as well as the cancer treatment drug Imbruvica and the hepatitis C treatment Mavyret. AbbVie reported $33.3 billion in net revenue in fiscal 2019, the 99th largest revenue of any public U.S. company. That number likely will grow when it releases 2020 earnings.

AbbVie shares have risen by 8% in the past year. That is less than the S&P 500, which was 16.6% higher over the same period. Nevertheless, the company’s market cap has grown to $183 billion. That makes it among the most valuable companies in America. Its growth should improve this year. Research firm Zacks recently pointed out, “While the historical EPS growth rate for AbbVie is 21.4%, investors should actually focus on the projected growth. The company’s EPS is expected to grow 17.5% this year, crushing the industry average, which calls for EPS growth of 8.1%.”

Click here to see America’s biggest companies that didn’t exist a decade ago.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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