Walmart Inc.: A Look at the Retail Giant in Numbers

Walmart Inc. announced on Wednesday, May 9 it had reached a $16 billion deal to buy a majority stake in Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce platform. The deal brings United State’s largest operator of physical retail stores into direct contact with Indian consumers as well as opens a new front of competition with e-tailer Amazon. Here’s a look at the U.S.’s retail giant’s profile highlights.

1. World’s Biggest Retailer In Revenue:

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest brick-and-mortar retailer by a substantial margin. The company reported worldwide revenue of $485.7 billion for its 2015 fiscal year, a year-over-year increase of about 2%. For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2018, Walmart's total revenue was $500.3 billion. About $228 billion of its revenue, nearly 60% of the total, is attributed to operations in the United States. Wal-Mart is the biggest player in the U.S. market, capturing 17.3% (as of 2016) of U.S. food and beverage retail sales.

2. World’s Second-largest Employer:

Walmart is the world's second-largest employer by number of employees at 2.3 million i.e. 23 lakh. The top 10 largest employers are: United States Department of Defense, People's Liberation Army, Walmart, McDonald's, National Health Service, China National Petroleum Corporation, State Grid Corporation of China, Indian Railways, Indian Armed Forces, Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn).

3. World’s Largest Publicly-owned Retail Company:

Most of the company's store locations worldwide operate under the Walmart brand. By the end of 2017, Walmart operated a total of 11,695 stores throughout the world in 27 countries. It had about 4,672 of those stores located in the United States alone. The company also operates other retail chains, including Sam's Club membership warehouse stores around the world, ASDA stores in the United Kingdom, Bodega Aurrera stores in Mexico and Seiyu stores in Japan.

4. Walmart’s E-commerce Presence:

E-commerce currently accounts for only around 3% of Wal-Mart‘s total revenue. But, at the end of fiscal year 2017, Walmart posted a 44% increase in e-commerce sales to $11.5 billion across all its U.S. sites. However, this huge growth was not enough as its competitor Amazon overtook Walmart’s e-commerce growth in the fourth quarter of 2017. By 2020, analysts expect Wal-Mart’s e-commerce sales to contribute about 4% in the company’s total sales.

5. Top-five Performing Stock:

Walmart Inc. is one of the top five performing stocks in the year in 2017 in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, according to Bloomberg. The retail behemoth’s stock is up about 43% from a year ago.

With the Flipkart deal, the Indian e-commerce scene brings the world’s three largest e-tailers in competition with each other – Walmart, Amazon and Alibaba.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 10, 2018 09:48 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).