Walmart's World: Walmart's revenue is more than the GDP of most countries on earth!

Chartr ^ | 11/19/2023

[SeekAndFind]

Walmart’s world

We know you know Walmart is big, but it’s hard to overstate just how big America’s largest retailer actually is. In addition to selling the most stuff and employing the most people of any private employer, Walmart's physical footprint is unmatched, with enough floor space in stores in the US alone to fit some 12,500 football fields.

On the topic of employment, Walmart’s roster is nothing short of an army, employing approximately 1.6 million “associates” just in the US — more than the 1.4 million people that call Hawaii home — enough to make it the 41st most-populous state in the country.

Ka-ching In its most recent fiscal year, Walmart sold $606 billion worth of stuff, which is a number so big it’s almost meaningless on its own. $606 billion is more than the annual output of most countries on Earth. Not some countries, most countries. Indeed, were it a sovereign nation, Walmart’s revenue would be enough to rank around 27th in the world, more than the GDP of Sweden, Singapore, New Zealand and Norway (with all of its oil riches). That shakes out to around $69m an hour, and it means that since you started reading this newsletter (which we’re assuming was about a minute ago if you haven’t skimmed too much), Walmart has sold ~$1.15m worth of merchandise. When Walmart coughs… The sheer size of Walmart, which also operates Sam’s Club, makes it a unique barometer of the American consumer. When Walmart execs talk about a trend, economists listen. That’s why the company's warning last week, in which CFO John Rainey forecast weaker spending going into the holiday season, was taken seriously. The fact that consumers continue to feel price sensitive, having endured inflation for much of the last 2 years, is perhaps no surprise. With more bargain-seeking shoppers walking its aisles than any other retailer, Walmart only gets to stay in business by being hyper-competitive on price. In fact, despite its gargantuan economies of scale, the retailer ekes out a surprisingly small sliver of profit on its sales, reporting just a 2.2% net profit margin so far this year.

Of course, there’s no need to get your violins out for Walmart shareholders any time soon, because when you sell as much Walmart does, even a 2.2% margin shakes out to a not-so-slim $10.6bn in profit — and that's just for the first 9 months of its latest fiscal year.

Amazon ran, so Walmart could walk One part of Walmart’s business that comes with tastier margins is its booming e-commerce division. As we charted earlier this year, Walmart's online business has been on fire, growing between 2019 and 2023 at a similar pace to that which e-commerce trailblazer Amazon achieved from 2007-2011. That opens up new opportunities for Walmart, like advertising. Indeed, in the coming years, Walmart execs expect selling advertising on Walmart.com, or collecting fees from merchants that use its online marketplace, to make much larger contributions to future profit growth than just selling more stuff. That its online presence is now a source of optimism is certainly ironic, having grappled with online retailers for much of the last two decades. Indeed, following fierce price wars between Amazon and Walmart, like the one on books in the early 2000s, many expected Jeff Bezos's monolith to eat Walmart's lunch.

Although Amazon’s meteoric rise — surpassing Walmart as the more valuable company back in 2015 — has been remarkable, Walmart's core business has held up just fine. Indeed, even with the sharp drop on Friday, Walmart’s share price remains near its all-time peak, up 63% over the last 5 years. Low prices, high costs Whether stifling Mom-and-Pop stores in small towns, being accused of the poor treatment of animals in its supply chain, or just its general treatment of its workforce, Walmart hasn't gotten to its place at the top of the food chain without racking up a long list of controversies. The company's high staff turnover rate has been a particular focus, as has the company's anti-union practices, which some say make Walmart among the nation's most aggressive anti-union organizations. Although it may feel like it's always been a permanent part of the American business landscape, Walmart is in some ways still young, having only been founded in 1962. It's also unique in that it remains majority-owned (~50%) by direct descendants of its founder, Sam Walton. The fortune has been passed down through the Walton generations — a family who won't be wanting for any material objects at the Thanksgiving table this year, with a collective net worth of some $200-250bn.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

[Dr. Sivana]

Amazon makes a huge chuck of its revenue from AWS and IT Cloud services. A lot of their sales are from vendors who use Amazon as a storefront. Amazon Prime is used to buy NFL football games and cheap/freee movies/music.

In other words, Amazon is not just or even primarily, an online Walmart, it is its own thing, and gets ots money from many sources.

[pa_dweller]

I believe Lowe’s is planning something similar.

[entropy12]

No wonder America is broke. Only manufacturing company in that list is Ford. Manufacturing is the biggest wealth creator for any country. Retail is at bottom of list for wealth creation. America has become a retail store for made in China goods.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

And still, never a cash register open when you need one.

[unclebankster]

No wonder America is broke. Only manufacturing company in that list is Ford. Manufacturing is the biggest wealth creator for any country. Retail is at bottom of list for wealth creation. America has become a retail store for made in China goods.

************

This had to happen, starting in the 1960’s the American System of government decided to gut manufacturing and industry by stretching our supply chains into foreign nations.

The results of destroying these important industries, that are the backbone of any independent civilized nation, is the growth of nonessential employers and employers.

We’re now a nation of *Kamala Harris Types.

Free Republic Biden Republicans need to understand if they vote for Biden again, they want Harris negotiating with global predators like Xi Jinping & Vladimir Putin.

Country First? or Your Vanity & Ego First?

*Kamala Harris Type Definition- An imbecile that if you put in charge of important businesses & organizations, will lead to the destruction of those entities.

[4Runner]

WalMart has hundreds of self-branded products which actively compete with US brand-name products for sale on its own shelves. Wouldn’t this practice qualify WalMart as a manufacturer of sorts, even as the products most manufacturers produce in other industries also include components made elsewhere and by other entities as well? OTOH, many brand-name manufacturers include a notice on their products which states they are not producers of store-branded alternatives to their own products. Confusing, yes?

[Ex-Con777]

“Walmart’s revenue would be enough to rank around 27th in the world, more than the GDP of Sweden, Singapore, New Zealand and Norway.”

If you count debt, the USA could be added to that list.

EC

[Gaffer]

What really ticks me off about Ford is the government push to go EV, even for trucks, and Ford working to comply.

[SaveFerris]

LOLOLOL

[Brian Griffin]

“EV”

It’s been cloudy for quite a number of days here in Florida.

It’s been chilly for about two days.

The solar cells have not been very productive.

[Brian Griffin]

“Retail is at bottom of list for wealth creation.”

Branding can be very lucrative - often far more than manufacture.

Sometimes Americans get to buy close to the manufacture price on some things. This gives an idea of the mark-ups branding can allow.

[Brian Griffin]

“Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis. Clients will often use this in combination with autoscaling (a process that allows a client to use more computing in times of high application usage, and then scale down to reduce costs when there is less traffic). These cloud computing web services provide various services related to networking, compute, storage, middleware, IoT and other processing capacity, as well as software tools via AWS server farms. This frees clients from managing, scaling, and patching hardware and operating systems. One of the foundational services is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows users to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, with extremely high availability”

“Revenue US$80 billion (2022)”

“Operating income US$22.8 billion (2022)”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services

[central_va]

But they pay “associates” barely enough to live on.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

......starting in the 1960’s the American System of government decided to gut manufacturing and industry by stretching our supply chains into foreign nations.

What drove American manufacturing overseas was EPA and OSHA. Not that either were bad things in principle, but the way they were administered was stifling. I was there. I spent more time engineering compliance to incomprehensible regulations, written by moronic non-engineers, than I did engineering the products.

And like all bureaucracies it's only gotten worse.

See: Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy,

[central_va]

We can't import goods and export jobs forever. Sooner or later the USA will collapse. We need a tariff and we need it now. Adam Smith was the worlds first globalist Free Traitor™. F all the Adam Smithians....

[central_va]

The only way to defeat globalist Free Traitors™ is with a really high import tariff. I say F all the ignorant myopic sub humans that want to destroy the USA's industrial base.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

WalMart has hundreds of self-branded products which actively compete with US brand-name products for sale on its own shelves.

And I've sometimes found that I like the "house brand" product better than the "name brand".

A major plus for Walmart in my book is their policy of selling prescription drugs for prices far below the big name pharmacies. My personal example is insulin, (which can actually be sold OTC in my home state of Ohio). Rite Aid tried to sell it to me for ~$115 a vial. Walmart: $25.

[Trinity5]

Because the high level of skill needed to be an “associate” at Wal-Mart should garner a salary well over $100,000 a year...