Yahoo Finance What’s Driving Same-Store Sales Growth in Walmart’s US Stores?
Walmart's Fiscal 1Q17: Did Earnings Surpass Expectations?
Walmart’s revenue beats expectations, company guidance
Walmart (WMT) saw a 0.9% rise in sales to $115.9 billion in fiscal 1Q17. In constant currency terms, the retailer (XRT) saw its sales rise by 4%.
Walmart beat Wall Street analysts’ consensus revenue estimate of $113.2 billion. Its better-than-expected performance was driven by sales growth in its US segments, which somewhat muted the adverse impact of foreign exchange movements on its overseas sales.
Walmart US is the best-performing segment
Walmart US (SPY) (VOO), the company’s largest segment, saw its sales rise by 4.3% to $73.2 billion. Sales growth came in via new store openings, higher store traffic, and above-average growth in e-commerce sales. Importantly for Walmart, it saw comps growth in a broad spectrum of merchandising categories, with the notable exception of grocery.
Walmart opened 13 new supercenters, including relocations and conversions, and 20 neighborhood market stores during fiscal 1Q17. It also expanded its online grocery business to nine new markets in the first quarter, taking the total to nearly 40.
Same-store sales growth
Same-store sales growth came in better than expected at 1% for Walmart US after factoring in the negative impact of 60 basis points of food price deflation. Walmart had projected comps of 0.5% for the segment during its fiscal 4Q16 earnings release in February 2016.
In contrast, same-store sales growth came in at 2.2% for Dollar General (DG), 1.7% for Dollar Tree (DLTR), and 1.2% for Target (TGT) in their most recent respective quarters. US normalized comps came in at 4% for Costco (COST) in its fiscal 2Q16.
DG, DLTR, and COST are slated to declare their quarterly earnings next week.
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