Yesterday, we reported that Walmart’s quarterly earnings of the last quarter of 2019 will be massive when it comes to the future of the retail giant. Because of the fact that we could sense in the market that investors were hoping that Walmart could report earnings which might be on par or higher than expected to stem the losses that they have been doing since last few quarters. This would have also meant that Walmart could pose a serious threat to Amazon which has been reporting sales growth bundled with profits as well.
However, that is not to be as Walmart has reported its Q4 2019 earnings which are disappointing. It is to be noted that the earnings for Q4 2019 from Walmart are lower-than-expected and we should keep in mind that this needed to be the best quarter for Walmart as we had the Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales as well as the entire holiday season.
Walmart revealed that its earnings for Q4 2019 stood at $141.67 billion which is lower than the $142.55 billion expected. Also, Walmart expected its earnings per share to be $1.44 which was also adjusted to $1.38 per share. Interestingly, Walmart revealed one of the reasons for this revenue drop to be “softer” holiday sales. It should be noted that Walmart’s majority of the earnings still come from its retail stores whereas it is investing heavily on the online front too. Also, Walmart’s e-commerce growth is quite impressive but we have to note that they are burning money to achieve this growth as well.
So the only option left for Walmart is to achieve profits from the retail stores which can be dumped into its online stores. Since that is not happening, we are seeing Walmart report lower-than-expected revenue figures. It is worth mentioning that Amazon reported record sales in Q4 2019 which shows that Walmart needs to focus more on its online stores.
