A week after one of Minnesota's Fortune 500 companies announced it was moving out of state, the business magazine released its annual ranking and showed two of the state's firms rising onto the list.
The additions of St. Paul-based Securian Financial and Medina-based Polaris Industries bring the total number of Minnesota-based firms in the Fortune 500 to 19.
Those 19 include Mosaic Co., which announced last week it will move its headquarters from Plymouth to Tampa, Fla., though it did not specify timing. But they don't include some giant Minnesota firms.
Fortune ranks companies by revenue, chiefly focused on publicly traded firms while also counting cooperatives and some privately held companies that disclose their financial performance to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
For instance, the magazine doesn't include Cargill Inc., the Minnetonka-based agricultural trader and processor that has about $120 billion in annual revenue, but it does include agricultural co-ops CHS and Land O'Lakes, both based in the Twin Cities. And Securian, while not publicly traded, files performance documents with the SEC.
The number of Minnesota firms on the Fortune 500 has hovered in the 17 to 20 range in recent years depending on acquisitions and other corporate moves.
Valspar Corp., the Minneapolis paint firm acquired by Sherwin-Williams Co. last year, disappeared from the list.
The biggest Minnesota-based firm on the list, Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group, is now ranked fifth after pushing past $200 billion in 2017 revenue. Only Walmart, ExxonMobil, Berkshire Hathaway and Apple are larger.
The company's two big businesses — insurance provider UnitedHealthcare and health data services firm Optum — are nearly even in size and, if they were separate would eclipse all other Minnesota companies except Cargill in revenue.
Two years ago, Fortune stopped including Medtronic Corp. after its legal headquarters moved to Ireland through its acquisition of Covidien. At around $30 billion in annual revenue, Medtronic is close in size to St. Paul-based 3M Co., which is ranked 97th overall and counts as the No. 5 Minnesota firm on the list.
While Fortune named the list the Fortune 500, it is actually a ranking of 1,000 U.S. companies.
On the full list, there are 25 Minnesota-based companies, a number that has not changed for several years.
Evan Ramstad • 612-673-4241
