The Return on Sales figures that you appear to be using are not the right indicators of profitability. "Profit", in this content, would be better compared on terms of return on invested capital (ROIC) or return on equity (ROE). This also ties the analysis more directly into the prospects for future investment in the sector.

If you compare two retailers, one high end (think Tiffany's) and one low end (Walmart), you would find that return on sales for WalMart would be very low because sales volume is huge and the margin is very low. The opposite would be true for Tiffany's. This does not mean that Tiffany's is more profitable. Return on Sales has a lot to do with whether the business model is high turnover or high margin.

A better question to ask is: How much profit is generated from each dollar invested. ROIC measures the return to all investors as a percentage of the capital invested to generate that return. ROE measures just the return to equity. In reality it is a bit more complex as single year measures are inadequate and the perceived risk of the asset plays a big role.

If you invested $100 in a business that had a single sale of $55 on a product that cost $50 to produce, you would have a return on sales of 10%, but a return on invested capital of 5%. If you made two sales, the ROS figure would remain the same, but ROIC would double. A companies making ten of these sales a year still have a ROS of 5%, but ROIC (profit) of 50% ($50).

Solowriter, would you provide the link to the API/Fortune data? I tried to find it on the API site, but couldn't. It's not clear from your post what data API is using.