Never mind the mixed signals about the state of global consumers, and never mind Amazon.com’s growing might. Walmart’s run of booming comparable sales growth continues unabated.
The big-box giant reported Tuesday that its U.S. comparable sales rose 4.2 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, better than analysts had expected. It was its biggest growth on this measure during the crucial holiday quarter in at least 10 years.
The results suggest Walmart was successful in executing its holiday season playbook, which included initiatives such as in-aisle checkout to get customers in and out of stores quickly. It also strategically expanded its assortment of toys to fill the void left by the liquidation of Toys “R” Us and said the category was among its strongest-growing ones in the quarter.
Walmart also reported that its grocery department – crucial both because it makes up such a large share of total sales, but also because it is core to its e-commerce strategy – experienced “mid-single digit” comparable sales growth from a year earlier. Given the aggressive efforts by Amazon and Kroger to sharpen their digital efforts in this segment, it is important that Walmart held its own.
The most important figure in this report, though, was Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce growth, which was up 43 percent from a year earlier. That was a far better performance in the digital realm than Walmart notched in the holiday quarter a year earlier, when growth slowed to 23 percent, in part because of operational challenges. Despite the fact that Walmart overall had a solid fourth quarter a year earlier, shares dropped sharply on the e-commerce results after they were reported, suffering their steepest one-day drop since 1988 as investors questioned whether online chief Marc Lore’s magic had worn off.
This year’s results show Walmart learned from its mistakes and has improved its e-commerce supply chain and selection of merchandise to compete effectively.
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