3 Lean and Mean Stocks Generating Over $1M in Revenue Per Worker

Key Points

• Revenue per employee is an insightful metric that can help measure the efficiency and productivity of a company's workforce.
• High revenue per employee indicates that businesses are able to scale and that management is putting people in positions to succeed.
• Companies in big tech, semiconductors, and payments make up this list of high revenue per employee firms.

When it comes to some of the most valuable companies in the world, there are often several factors that make them stand out from the rest. Among the most important is high workforce productivity. One interesting metric that illustrates workforce productivity is revenue per employee. Exceedingly high revenue per employee signals two key attributes of a large business that allow for strong workforce productivity: scalability and strong management.

Scalability means a business can increase the revenue and profit it generates disproportionately to an increase in headcount and other costs. This is how companies drive higher margins. Effective use of technology and products that are strong in comparison to competitors can help drive scale. High revenue per employee shows that managers are using their staff well. They are placing them in roles that maximize their skills and productivity. As employees maximize their productivity, they also generate more revenue.

Below, I'll detail three firms. They generated over $1 million in revenue per employee in the last 12 months, showing impressive workforce productivity.

Visa: Leveraging Scale to Keep Marketing Spend Down

Visa NYSE: V had approximately 31,600 employees in fiscal year 2024. Over the last 12 months, Visa generated nearly $36 billion in revenue. This results in revenue per employee of $1.1 million. Visa's business scalability shows in its growth. Its adjusted earnings per share (EPS) grew faster than its employee count. In 2015, the company had 11,300 employees and generated adjusted EPS of $2.62.  In fiscal 2024, the firm had adjusted EPS of $10.05. The growth in adjusted EPS is 262%, while the growth in headcount is just 180%. The company has boosted its profits far more than its headcount over the past 10 years.

Visa’s duopolistic position along with Mastercard NYSE: MA in U.S. payment processing contributes to its ability to scale. New businesses likely already know that Visa and Mastercard are their only options. So, Visa doesn't need to hire as many salespeople to convince customers to pick them over many other options. Advertising spending also becomes less necessary as its payment network grows, as most people will naturally gain exposure to their brand over time. This plays out in reality, as Visa’s marketing spend has increased by 79% since 2015, versus a 158% increase in total revenue.

Broadcom: Management Impressively Integrates VMWare

Chip giant Broadcom NASDAQ: AVGO is also generating huge amounts of sales in comparison to its number of employees. Broadcom’s 37,000 employees helped the company generate nearly $52 billion over the last 12 months. This equates to nearly 1.4 million in revenue per employee. Prior to the company’s massive acquisition of VMware, the revenue per employee figure was even higher. It sat at nearly $1.8 million before adding 17,000 VMware employees.

Still, the VMware merger shows how Broadcom is driving efficiency. Before the merger, VMware had approximately 38,000 employees. Yet, Broadcom expects to continue growing VMware-related revenue, despite retaining less than half of VMware's workers. It has been doing just that. VMware's annual bookings value increased 8% from Q3 2024 to Q4. Management expects this figure to accelerate to 10% in Q1 2025. Growth in revenue while decreasing headcount is drastically increasing margins at VMware. Broadcom has over doubled the operating margin of VMware since the acquisition, from 30% to 70%. It is a testament to management’s ability to integrate the business into Broadcom.

Apple: Earnings Grew Over 10x Faster Than Headcount Since 2019

Apple’s NASDAQ: AAPL revenue per employee vastly eclipses that of the other two firms, coming in at $2.4 million. Apple generated $391 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, with 164,000 employees. Apple has demonstrated its ability to scale by increasing its revenues and adjusted EPS at a much faster rate than its headcount. Apple’s employee count was 137,000 in 2019, meaning the number has grown by 20% since. However, over that time, revenue has grown by 50%. Annual adjusted EPS increased from $2.97 to $6.75, an increase of over 127%.

Particularly strong drivers of the company’s revenue and earnings growth have come from its services segment and geographies outside the Americas. Annual services revenue has increased by 108% since 2019. Gross margins in the services segment have also increased dramatically, up to 74% from 64% in 2019. Non-Americas revenue grew by 56% over the period, significantly outpacing the 43% growth in Americas revenue.