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| Economy |
| Walmart's Fight Against Amazon Is Picking Up Steam |
| 2018-11-19 |
| [Forbes] In Walmart’s bid to take on Amazon, the world’s largest retailer once again showed it's willing to spend and sacrifice profit margin for market share gains and other potential competitive advantages. Walmart WMT -1.86% on Thursday reported a better-than-expected U.S. comparable sales gain of 3.4% in the quarter that ended October 31 and said it gained market share in categories including food, consumables and "many areas" of general merchandise. On a two-year stacked basis, those sales rose 6.1%, the first time in over 10 years that Walmart said it's seen such a scorecard. While higher store traffic, driven by demand for fresh food, and a higher average transaction amount contributed to the sales growth, e-commerce also played a critical role. Walmart's U.S. e-commerce sales surged 43%, contributing about 1.4 percentage points to last quarter’s results. But those gains have come at a cost. Walmart U.S.'s third-quarter gross margin rate narrowed, hurt primarily by its pricing strategy, higher transportation expenses and the increasing mix of e-commerce growth, the company said. Year to date, the company’s total capital spending has increased slightly to $7 billion while year-to-date operating income has declined 0.5% to $15.9 billion. As Walmart aggressively seeks to use its store fleet as a key weapon against Amazon.com AMZN -1.61%, results at its brick-and-mortar stores are increasingly intertwined with online sales. Walmart said Thursday that it has nearly 2,100 Walmart U.S. locations with grocery pickup services and is on track to offer same-day grocery delivery at approximately 800 stores by the end of the year. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 amazon's advantage is it has lots of non retail income (its rental of cloud cyberspace). walmart's advantage is it has far more retail outlets (whole foods only has about 500 stores in the US; walmart has about 5000)but this comes with a vulnerability as Bernie and his mob are demanding wage increases for walmart's employees |
| Posted by: lord garth 2018-11-19 10:18 |
| #2 ...Amazon is still being run by a first generation leadership. IBM and GE was/is run by suits. First generation Walmart is now gone. Same thing happening at Southwest Airlines. Bozo is willing to gamble to take chances. Its his to win or lose. The suits who are well feed are more concerned about their position within the hierarchy and among their social peers. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-11-19 09:11 |
| #1 Walmart is huge. Momentum is a big deal too. If I was on Walmart's board I'd make sure everyone else on the board studied what has happened to GE and IBM. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-11-19 07:36 |