Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT) stock surged over 6.7% on November 16th, 2017 driven by their outstanding e-commerce performance.
The group’s U.S. eCommerce sales surged 50% during the third quarter of 2018 driven by their Walmart.com. This shows customers embracing the group’s initiatives like online grocery and free twoday shipping, leading to new customers, suppliers and partnerships getting attracted to Walmart. The group tripled the number of items on Walmart.com reaching >70 million SKUs today. The group’s U.S. comp sales enhanced 2.7%, while comp traffic rose 1.5%. Their Sam’s Club delivered comp-sales growth without fuel of 2.8% during the quarter while enhanced its member traffic, by 3.6% including some hurricane-related benefits.
The group is attracting premium brands to the sites like KitchenAid and Bose and continuing to expand their tests of same-day and next day delivery, including their test with August Home, and the use of crowdsourced partners for grocery and their own associates. Their Jet.com, is focusing on higher income, urban customers. The group launched the Uniquely J private brand and also started selling ModCloth items on Jet this quarter.
As per their international performance, their Mexican market undertook initiatives like online grocery and recently launched an eCommerce marketplace which expanded their general merchandise assortment by about 20 percent. In Canada, the group invested in price leading to market-share gains in major traffic-driving categories. The group continues to expand the number of locations of their online grocery pickup during the quarter and also launched an eCommerce marketplace which doubled the Canada’s online assortment. In China, the group generated a solid net sales growth of 4 percent.
The group also expanded their Walmart stores in China that offer grocery delivery in less than one hour via the JD Daojia delivery platform to nearly 140 stores. In the U.K., Asda delivered positive comp sales driven by store experience and price investments.
The group’s net sales and GMV surged 50% and 54%, respectively durinf the quarter. Net sales at Walmart International enhanced 4.1% yoy to $29.5 billion. The group reported that ten of eleven markets delivered a positive comp sales, including four of their major markets.
For fiscal year of 2018, the group expects their GAAP EPS to be in the range of $3.84 to $3.92 while Adjusted EPS would be in the range of $4.38 to $4.46. Comp sales for the 13-week period ending Jan. 26, 2018 for Walmart U.S. (ex. fuel) is forecasted to be the range of +1.5% to +2.0%.