In this article we are going to list the 15 largest Canadian companies. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 5 largest Canadian companies. Canada is one of the most highly developed economies in the world, and the neighbor to the United States has continued to grow in stature especially over the past years and decades. It has the 9th largest GDP in the entire world, and like most developed nations, its GDP is focused on the service sectors, where around three-fourth of Canadians work.
Canada is also blessed in the fact that it has huge terrain and abundant natural resources. In fact, it it said to have the third highest value of total natural resources in the world, with the value being estimated at around $33.2 trillion in 2019. You might be surprised to know this since Canada doesn’t really feature in conversations regarding petroleum resources ahead of other candidates such as Middle Eastern companies, Saudi Arabia and Norway, but Canada actually has the third highest petroleum reserves in the world, and is also the fourth biggest exporter of petroleum in the world too.
The thing about Canada is, it has always had a sparse population and a vast amount of land, most of which is uninhabitable due to the weather and terrain. Hence, Canada always focused on inviting skilled migrants from countries across the world to move to Canada, make it their home and contribute to the economy with their skills, which makes it one of the most globalized economies in the world as well. And the way things work in the country have ensured that there is a low level of income disparity, even when compared to other developed countries like the United States and its disposable income per capita is well above the average of the Organization of Economically Developed Countries, which shows how far the nation has come.
While Canada’s population of nearly 38 million is just a fraction of the population of its neighbor in the United States, Canada has still been able to produce a lot of major companies which are well known across the world. Since its own population is low, most of the largest companies in Canada also have operations in the United States, which is why these companies are also often listed on either of the two major US stock exchanges. These companies also tend to have operations across the world and not just within Canada or the US, which is how they’re able to earn their billions in revenue. In fact, Canada’s stock exchange is actually the 8th largest stock exchange in the entire world, bigger than many major European countries and has more than 1,500 companies with a combined market capitalization of at least $3 trillion. True, only the top two US companies are able to exceed the market capitalization of the entire Canadian stock exchange, but honestly $3 trillion is no laughing matter.
Just the 15 biggest Canadian companies have a market capitalization of more than $633 billion. Their combined revenue for 2019 exceeds $500 billion while their assets are worth more than $5.8 trillion. These companies are also highly profitable and their total profits exceeded $65 billion. As I mentioned earlier, natural resources are vastly abundant in Canada, which is why it should be no surprise that we will kick off our list with a company that is engaged in the exploration of natural sources. To calculate our rankings, we considered the market capitalization, revenue, assets and profits of each company, and determined their average rankings based on these metrics. After all, ranking a company by size can be subjective with some people preferring assets, other people preferring market cap, and yet others preferring revenue for their ranking. We hence took the average to ensure that all possible metrics were accounted for. Our source for these statistics were Forbes latest list on the 2000 biggest companies in the entire world, which had a lot of entries from Canada. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the cornerstones of the Canadian economy, starting with number 15:
15. Canadian Natural Resources
Total revenue of the company in 2019 (in billions of dollars): 17.2
Total profit of the company in 2019 (in billions of dollars): 4.1
Total assets of the company in 2019 (in billions of dollars): 62.3
Total market value of the company in March 2020 (in billions of dollars): 19.8
The company is engaged in exploring hydrocarbons and is the biggest natural gas producer in Western Canada in addition to being the biggest producer of heavy crude oil in the country.
vovan/Shutterstock.com
