Industry development

This graph illustrates the change in sales and profitability for the top 100 companies over the last five years. Sales revenues increased +16% last year to US$ 807 billion for the 100 largest companies, and profitability increased by +0.37 percentage points for an operating margin of 6.20%. It is also interesting to note the longer term trend, with revenues +72% higher in 2006 than they were five years previously.