Maine companies near Fortune 500, but shutout continues after 16 years

This year’s Fortune 500 rankings have just been released, but Maine remains waiting to recrack them.

Two animal-health companies headquartered in the state are again poised on the edge of Fortune magazine’s prestigious roster, published Monday.

The list ranks the 500 largest U.S.-based public corporations by revenues. Most of the companies are repeat honorees, but Fortune also provides rankings for the 500 next-largest — potentially future members of the elite corps.

Covetrus Inc. (Nasdaq: CVET), of Portland, ranks No. 643 on the overall list. That position is down 50 places from the company’s debut on the list last year. For this year’s ranking, Covetrus reported 2021 revenue of $4.58 billion; for last year's ranking, the 2020 revenue was $4.3 billion.

Westbrook-based IDEXX Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq: IDXX) ranks No. 798 in 2022, two notches up from its standing last year. IDEXX reported 2021 revenue of $3.22 billion.

The Fortune 500 has been published annually since 1955. Over the years, Maine-based businesses have made the cut, but not in more than a decade.

In fact, Maine last appeared on the list in 2006, when Energy East Corp. ranked No. 405 with revenue of $5.3 billion.

Longtime Maine business Unum and Scarborough-based Hannaford Supermarkets were perennial members of the list in the 1990s. But Hannaford was acquired by European conglomerate Delhaize Group (now Ahold Delhaize) in 2000 and Unum (now known as Unum Group) moved headquarters to Tennessee in 2002.

A total of 39 New England companies made this year's Fortune 500. Fifteen are headquartered in Connecticut, 18 in Massachusetts and six in Rhode Island.

A total of 69 companies from New England were in the top 1,000. Like Maine, New Hampshire boasts two. Vermont is home to one.

Another Maine company may be waiting to enter the rankings.

WEX Inc. (NYSE: WEX), the payment technology company based in Portland, reported revenue of $1.85 billion in 2021, up 19% over 2020. In April, the company issued revenue guidance of $2.155 billion to $2.195 billion for 2022.

Those figures might put WEX ahead of DocuSign (Nasdaq: DOCU), a San Francisco tech company with 2021 revenue of $2.11 billion. DocuSign ranks No. 1,000 on this year’s Fortune list.