Walmart Q4 FY24 Earnings Shows Improved Outlook Year Over Year
Walmart continues to execute well across a number of fronts, and seems cautiously optimistic on calendar 2024, relative to how we began calendar 2023. What is driving Walmart results?
1 - Growth in Higher Margin Businesses. Improved contribution from Ads, Marketplace, Fulfillment, and Membership.
* Ads business grew 28% y/y to $3.4B globally, WMT Connect US grew 22%
(Amazon at $47B, almost 14x larger than WMT ads business)
* 50% of WMT Connect US ads growth from marketplace sellers.
* WMT+ same-day leading share-gains among upper-income households
* Global membership income grew by 20%
* Operating cash flow up 4% y/y to $35B
2 - Supply Chain Costs. Improved leverage upstream (automation in RDCs) and downstream (route density, same-day fulfill from store)
* Store-fulfilled delivery up 50% y/y
* WMT US inventory down 4.5% due to better sell-throughs
* Lowered last-mile delivery costs by 20% y/y, 90% of stores can deliver same-day now.
* Lowered eCom losses by 40% y/y
3 - eCommerce is a growth area.
* Weekly active customer file grew 17% y/y, primarily due to marketplace growth.
* WMT US marketplace revenue grew 45%, with. more than 35% of orders fulfilled by Walmart.
* MKPL key to expanding general merch assortment online. improves our perception in general merch.
Broader outlook:
* Did not seem to be concerned about a 2024 recession.
* "Tech investments" causing sales to outpace operating income in 1H FY2025, which should flip to operating income faster than sales in 2H FY2025.
* general merchandise still see more weakness this year.
* expect net sales growth 3-4% c/c, with op income 5% growth
Other tidbits:
* WMT US comp sales grew 4% y/y (low end of guidance)
* WMT has 2.1 million employees worldwide
* This year has a leap year day as well as another 53rd week in Q4 for comp purposes to account for.
* Acquired Vizio. Primarily for advertising reasons.
* Oh yeah, did I mention 3 for 1 stock split and raised divided 9%. Dunking on Amazon here. Expect a cold day in hell for Amazon to announce a dividend. They would move to "Day 5" (where they are now) to "Day 365" if they did this.
