Large German companies will generate enormous sales in 2021, despite the pandemic: the 200 largest companies will earn 451 billion euros more than before. A company currently in crisis is second in the “FAZ” ranking, first place is occupied by an old acquaintance, climber of the year is a pandemic profiteer.
The Corona crisis was only able to temporarily halt the growth of large local companies. The sales of the 200 largest companies based in Germany increased by more than 15 percent or 451 billion euros in 2021. This is the result of an evaluation of the list of German corporations compiled annually by the archive of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ). The heavyweights from industry, trade and services have not only more than ironed out the collapse of the Corona year 2020. With a total of almost 3.4 trillion euros, they also achieved the highest turnover in recent years since 2011 inclusive.
In 2020, Corona had caused a drop in sales of more than 4 percent. A look in the balance sheet rearview mirror of the German corporate world shows that the pandemic – even if it is not finally over yet – was only able to temporarily stop the growth of the corporations. But with the war in Ukraine and the West’s loss of power in world politics, new trouble spots and dangers for the market economy have long since appeared. The associated energy shortage alone could have even more devastating consequences for companies and society than Corona has so far.
The “FAZ” archive takes into account the net sales of the companies for its annual list, i.e. without passing through items such as value added tax or energy taxes. With regard to individual companies, the energy group Uniper stands out, which suffered the largest loss of all companies on the “FAZ” list at 4.1 billion euros due to the turbulence in energy prices last year. However, because the turbulence also inflated Uniper’s sales to almost 164 billion euros, the utility jumped from 14th to 2nd place behind Volkswagen. The semi-state Wolfsburg car group has been the top-selling company on the “FAZ” list for years.
In addition to the car industry, retail dominates with the Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland), the Aldi Group, the Rewe Group and the Edeka Group. Particularly spectacular is the rise of the corona vaccine inventor Biontech, which has never appeared on the list, but ended up in 41st place due to an incredible 3800 percent sales explosion to almost 19 billion euros. A notable sales climber is Delivery Hero. The operator of a digital platform for spontaneously ordering hot meals such as pizza or pasta increased its sales by 137 percent and, as another newcomer to the list, made it to number 116. Light and shadow are close together for the climber, but it also posted a loss of more than one billion euros and thus the fifth largest minus of all companies on the “FAZ” list – after Uniper, TUI, Lufthansa and Airbus Germany.
