Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript November 16, 2023

Walmart Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.53, expectations were $1.5.

Operator: Greetings. Welcome to Walmart’s Fiscal Year 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the conference over to Steph Wissink, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Steph, you may begin.

Steph Wissink: Thank you and happy holidays, everyone. Joining me today at our home office in Bentonville are Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, and CFO, John David Rainey. Doug will begin with his reflections on the quarter and year. John David will follow with his view of enterprise results and segment highlights using our financial framework of growth, margins and returns before speaking to our updated guidance for the year. For specific segment level results, please see our earnings release and accompanying presentation on our website. Following prepared remarks, we’ll take your questions. At that time, we will be joined by our segment CEOs, John Furner from Walmart U.S.; Kath McLay from Walmart International; and Chris Nicholas from Sam’s Club.

In order to address as many questions as we can, please limit yourself to one question. Today’s call is being recorded and management may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. Please review our press release and accompanying slide presentation for a cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements, as well as our entire Safe Harbor statement and non-GAAP reconciliations on our website at stock.walmart.com. Thank you for your interest in Walmart. Doug, over to you.

Doug McMillon: Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us to talk about our third quarter results and how we’re seeing the rest of the year. Our value proposition continues to resonate with customers, helping us gain share and drive e-commerce growth. We’re on track to grow adjusted operating income at a faster rate than sales for the year, consistent with what we discussed at our investor meeting earlier this year. We had strong revenue growth for the quarter across each of our segments. Comp sales for Walmart U.S. were 4.9% and 3.8% for Sam’s Club U.S. Sales for Walmart International were up 5.4% in constant currency, led by Walmex and China. Sam’s Club continues to perform well both in Mexico and China, and while strength was broad-based for Walmex.

Our Bodega Aurrera business is worth calling out as it continues to deliver outstanding growth. E-commerce sales were up 24% in Walmart U.S., 16% in Sam’s Club U.S., and 15% globally. Timing of our Flipkart Big Billion Days event, which moved from Q3 last year to Q4 this year, affected comparisons in our International segment, leading to a decline of 3%. So we’ll see the benefit from the timing shift as we report next quarter. Across markets, the team did a nice job driving our seasonal events. Our in-stock and inventory levels are in good shape. We finished down 1.2% in inventory for the total company, including down 5% for Walmart U.S. Both our top line and adjusted EPS came in better than what we projected at the beginning of the quarter, but we could have done a better job on expenses, which is reflected in adjusted operating income growing less than we expected.

We had a couple of unexpected expense increases in SG&A, and you’ll hear more about those when John David walks through the numbers. In the U.S., pricing levels in many food categories continue to be a concern. Overall, our product costs are up versus last year, and they remain up even more on a two-year stack, which is putting pressure on our customers. Beef prices are high, but we’re happy to see lower pricing in dairy, on eggs, and with chicken and seafood. The pockets of disinflation we are seeing are helping, but we’d like to see more, faster, especially in the dry grocery and consumables categories. The other good news is that general merchandise prices continue to come down GM is down low to mid-single digits versus last year. That enables us to rollback pricing which will help our customers during this holiday season when general merchandise is so important for gift-giving.

We still see pressure from mix including outside the U.S., which we expected, but I like the market-share gains we’re seeing in this category. In the U.S., we may be managing through a period of deflation in the months to come. And while that would put more unit pressure on us, we welcome it because it’s better for our customers. When I look at our P&L, it’s continuing to change shape. Mentally, break it down as a combination of a traditional retail P&L and a newer version that starts with our digital businesses. It flows from first and third-party e-commerce pickup and delivery to businesses like membership, advertising and fulfillment as a service. It includes some faster growing, higher margin components that combined with the more traditional P&L gives us a business model that’s more profitable in percentage terms as it grows.

We saw strong growth in all these areas for the quarter. And when you put it together with the supply-chain automation work we’re doing, you get a more sustainable business that can grow more effectively over time and create a better mix along the way. Marketplace is one of our engines for these mutually reinforcing businesses. Meaning that marketplace growth pulls other businesses like fulfillment through. Back in September, we held our first ever Marketplace Seller Summit. We hosted thousands of current and potential sellers to let them see first-hand our commitment to this business and how we will grow it together. Since the beginning of last year, we’ve more than doubled the number of items available to customers on our U.S. marketplace.

It’s an important piece of what we’re building, and it’s growing fast and not just in the U.S. We have a unique opportunity to grow in India, Mexico, Canada, and Chile. We love the opportunity to grow our assortment in this way, so customers can get what they want, when and how they want it. We’re making shopping easier and more convenient. Our net promoter scores for pickup and delivery in Walmart U.S. are improving and we’ve started using generative AI to improve our search and chat experience. We’ve released an improved beta version of search to some of our customers who are using our app on iOS. In the coming weeks and months, we will enhance this experience and roll it out to more customers. When I step back and look at the company overall, I love what we’re building and how we’re building it.

We’ve got a good hand at play and a strong team making things happen. It’s our recipe for growth and improved margin and returns we’ve been discussing with you. Everyday low prices are a foundational component of us fulfilling our purpose. We bring EDLP to life on a year-round basis by doing things like offering a Thanksgiving meal in the U.S. and Canada, that cost less than last year. We’re offering tremendous value for things like fashion, electronics, and seasonal decorations and helping remind people that when they’re looking to buy toys, we’re the place to come because we have the right product at the right price. The same focus on purpose and execution came through when I was visiting Chile, Canada, and China earlier this quarter, it was my first time back in China since before the pandemic.

Our team there run some of the most incredible Sam’s Clubs in the world and they continue to be a leader for us in terms of digital penetration and innovation. As I wrap up, I know we’re all concerned about events across the world, war, acts of terror, political unrest, impacts from storms like those in Mexico from Hurricane Otis, the pressure we’re feeling from stubborn inflation in some categories and other challenges beyond our control. As for our company, we care about everyone. We want to be a place where literally everyone feels comfortable and welcomed to shop or work. We want to live our values and create a warm, safe and fun place for the hundreds of millions of people that will shop with us in the days and weeks ahead. I’m grateful to be part of this big team, grateful to work alongside our associates.

Now, I’ll turn it over to John David.

John David Rainey: I’d like to start by thanking our customers, members, associates and partners for helping us deliver a good quarter. We’re pleased overall with how the team executed and how our strong value proposition and omnichannel strategy continue to resonate with customers. We’re gaining share, seeing strong e-commerce growth, and excited about the contributions from higher margin businesses like advertising. Sales grew more than 4%, gross profit was better than expected and we exceeded our guidance for EPS. These results reinforce the benefits of our highly diversified business with broad-based contributions across segments and markets, channels and formats, and strategic growth areas. While we’re pleased with our topline results, operating income was below our guidance due to higher than anticipated expenses largely certain legal accruals.

I’ll provide more details on guidance shortly. But the key takeaway is that we’re raising our full year sales and EPS guide while reiterating our prior operating income guidance. We expect the relationship between profit and sales growth to favor profitability in Q4 and for the full year to align with our goal of operating income growing faster than sales. Now let me review the key financial highlights for Q3, using our financial framework of growth, margins and returns. First, growth. Constant currency sales increased 4.4% or nearly $7 billion. Importantly, we saw traffic growth across both in-store and digital channels. All three operating segments experienced mid-single digit sales growth, with comp sales for Walmart U.S. up 4.9%, in Sam’s Club U.S. up 3.8% excluding fuel.

International grew sales 5.4% in constant currency with Walmex sales up more than 9%, and China up 25% with strong performance in Sam’s Club and e-commerce. The timing of Flipkart’s Big Billion Days pressured international sales growth as the event moved from Q3 last year to Q4 this year. So we expect the timing to be a benefit to Q4’s growth rate for the segment. PhonePe also continued its strong momentum with annualized TPV or total payment volume reaching 1.2 trillion on nearly 5.8 billion monthly transactions. And PhonePe recently achieved an impressive milestone eclipsing 500 million registered users. We continue to grow share in key categories, particularly in Walmart U.S. grocery where we delivered positive comps and saw strong share gains in both units and dollars.

Grocery inflation moderated nearly 300 basis points from Q2 levels to a mid-single digit increase versus last year. But on a two-year stack, it was still elevated at a high teens percentage. We see our customers showing ongoing discretion in seeking value to manage within their household budget, while general merchandise sales were down low-single digits year-over-year in Q3, the rate of change was stable to Q2 levels and we gained share across categories. As we enter the holiday season, we’re working hard to lower grocery prices to ease the pressure for customers giving them more capacity for general merchandise spent. Our business is rooted in a timeless purpose to save customer’s money, so they can live better. Against any economic backdrop, we’re there for customers, how and where they need us and we’re making shopping with Walmart and Sam’s Club, more convenient.

Omni services including pickup and store fulfilled delivery continue to drive strong growth, leading to a 24% increase in Walmart U.S. e-commerce sales and 16% growth at Sam’s Club. Multi-channel shoppers are more valuable, engaging more often and spending more with us. Pickup and delivery for Walmart U.S. has been a key source of growth and share gains among upper income households and has become the most productive channel for acquiring Walmart Plus members. In International, Walmex’s expansion of omni offerings led to 1.5 million Bodega store-fulfilled digital orders in Q3. In Canada, we continue to roll out our unlimited next day store delivery subscription called Delivery Pass, which is now available from two-thirds of our Canada stores.

And I was in China recently where our business is nearly a 50-50 split of physical and digital. I was impressed with how we’re serving omni customers with speed and accuracy through new engagement and delivery models. Turning to margins. Gross margins expanded 32 basis points, reflecting the timing shift of Big Billion Days in India and lapping last year’s LIFO charge at Sam’s Club U.S. Walmart U.S. gross margins increased to 5 basis points reflecting lower markdowns and supply chain costs. But we’re still seeing an ongoing category mix pressure as health and wellness and grocery sales outperformed general merchandise. Continued disinflation along with the success of our merchants at Sam’s Club and bringing down the cost of inventory resulted in us not taking the expected $50 million LIFO charge in Q3.

We no longer expect any further LIFO charges in Sam’s Club this year. As we’ve said previously, over the next several years, we expect margins to move higher as we modernize our supply chain and scale higher margin growth initiatives. We made good progress on both during the quarter. We continue to deploy capital to build technologies and optimize our next-generation supply chain with automation and productivity benefits starting to appear in our results. We now operate nine regional distribution centers servicing U.S. stores with varying levels of automation with six more centers in active stages of construction. Currently, more than 15% of stores receive merchandise from these facilities, helping to get product to shelves faster and more efficiently.

During the quarter, we opened our third next-generation e-commerce fulfillment center. These 1.5 million square feet facilities are expected to more than double the storage capacity, enable 2X the number of customer orders fulfilled daily, and will expand next and two-day shipping to nearly 90% of the U.S. including marketplace items shipped by Walmart Fulfillment Services. They also unlock new opportunities for our associates to transition into higher skilled tech focused positions. To support the store fulfilled digital business, we’re on-track to have seven stores with automated market fulfillment centers or MFCs operational by the end of this month. These MFCs start thousands of the most sought after items and are expected to increase order capacity and productivity, while also increasing inventory accuracy, which helps us deliver perfect orders for customers.

As we focus on improving e-commerce margins, we’re making good progress in lowering digital fulfillment cost and densifying the last mile by tapping our broad store and club network. Over the past year, Walmart U.S. has increased the percentage of digital orders fulfilled by stores by 800 basis points and Sam’s Club fulfills nearly 60% of online orders from its clubs. With the growth of our Spark Driver platform, we’ve lowered store to home delivery costs by 15% even as we shorten delivery times the same day for more than 80% of our stores and in some cases as quick as 30 minutes. As we scale Walmart GoLocal, we are densifying the last mile, and we’re approaching the milestone of 12 million deliveries for other retailers with this service. I’d like to touch on our portfolio of higher growth initiatives.

These businesses reinforce our core omni-retail model in our key to driving operating income growth ahead of sales over time. In Q3, this portfolio positively contributed to gross margins. Global advertising grew approximately 20% in Q3 with Sam’s Map growing over 27% and Walmart Connect, up 26%. As an illustration of the omnichannel benefits of our ad platforms, more than 75% of Sam’s Map active advertisers are investing in search and sponsored ads as in-club sales attribution has improved returns of digital ad spend by over 30%. International’s ad revenue growth was impacted by the timing of Big Billion Days, but we’re on track to deliver strong growth of approximately 45% for the full year. Moving to marketplace and fulfillment services.

Customer engagement continues to validate our strategy is to invest in ways to grow this business on a global basis. As Doug mentioned, we held the inaugural Marketplace Seller Summit to help accelerate our marketplace growth. For cross-border sellers in the U.S., we’re expanding access to more customers beyond the U.S., Canada and Mexico by opening our e-commerce marketplace in Chile to cross-border products next year. Over the past year, we’ve increased marketplace sellers by more than 20% and the number of sellers utilizing Walmart Fulfillment Services is up over 55%. Next, membership remains a compelling way we deepen engagement with our customers. Sam’s Club membership income grew over 7%, reflecting record member counts and Plus Member penetration.

During Q3, we held events that were focused on member acquisition and digital engagement. We’ll take a similar approach again during Q4 offering discounted access to Walmart Plus memberships while providing members early access to the best savings event throughout the holiday season. Turning back to the middle of the P&L. SG&A expenses deleveraged 37 basis points on an adjusted basis, impacted by higher year-over-year wage related cost in Walmart U.S., including higher variable pay expenses relative to last year when we were below our planned performance. Store remodel costs were also higher as we rolled out 117 of our flagship design stores earlier this month and legal expenses increased. Lastly, the timing shift of Big Billion Days pressured international expense leverage in Q3, we’ll see the benefit come through in Q4.

Third quarter adjusted operating income grew 3%, including 270 basis points of currency tailwind, while adjusted EPS of $1.53 increased 2% and compared favorably to guidance of $1.45 to $1.50. Relative to our guidance, Q3 EPS benefited by $0.01 from releasing the LIFO reserve we had earmarked for Sam’s Club. Moving to returns. Over the last 12 months, sales have grown more than 6% and operating income increased about 22% and when combined with a disciplined capital approach, return on investment improved 130 basis points to 14.1%. The primary driver was lapping last year’s Q3 charge related to the opioid legal settlement framework. ROI also reflects some benefits from productivity initiatives that we initially expected to realize in FY ’25.

We continue to expect our ROI to increase over the coming years. In addition to our strategy, our financial position is an advantage and enables us to compete in an increasingly dynamic retail environment. Turning to guidance. We’re confident in our agility and our ability to execute and we’re focusing our investment in areas where we can widen our omni advantage, deepen engagement and drive sustained growth in new revenue streams. We like our position relative to competitors as we’ve maintained strong price gaps and increased share while preserving flexibility to respond to competitive dynamics. But we’re not immune from the vagaries of the economy. We see our customers showing ongoing discretion in making trade-offs to be able to afford the things they want given the sustained high cost of the things they need.

Recently, we’ve experienced a higher degree of variability and weekly performance in between holiday events in the U.S., including seeing a softening in the back half of October, it was off-trend to the rest of the quarter. Sales during November have turned higher as unseasonal weather abated and we kicked-off holiday events. So sales have been somewhat uneven and this gives us reason to think slightly more cautiously about the consumer versus 90 days ago. We still expect sales growth to moderate in Q4 versus prior quarters as grocery inflation further normalizes towards historic levels. So we’re encouraged by the increased traffic and share gains we’ve seen and expect them to continue. As such, we are modestly raising our full year sales guidance to 5% to 5.5% from 4% to 4.5% previously primarily to reflect Q3’s outperformance.

For operating income, we’re maintaining the guidance range of 7% to 7.5% growth. In addition to the 40 basis points of unexpected legal expenses in Q3, we also expect to record charges in Q4, totaling approximately 20 basis points to 30 basis points related to unplanned store closures and recovery costs associated with the recent hurricane near Acapulco, Mexico. This impacted 28 of our stores and less than half of them have been reopened at this time. Partially offsetting these costs is the approximate 40 basis point benefit from lower than expected LIFO charges compared to our prior guide. The net effect is a 20 basis point to 30 basis point headwind to our prior guide and as such, we currently expect to be in the lower end of the operating income growth range for the year.

We expect merchandise mix pressure to continue in Q4 with grocery and health and wellness sales rates outpacing general merchandise and potentially be a bit more pronounced given the uncertain consumer environment. Based on Q3 results and less of an increase in interest cost for the year than we previously expected, we’re raising our full year EPS guidance range to $6.40 to $6.48. In closing, let me reiterate what I said previously, aligned with our financial framework, we expect the relationship between profit and sales growth to favor profitability in Q4 and for the full year operating income to grow faster than sales. We like our competitive position. Our financial results clearly demonstrate that our omnichannel strategy is winning. We’re growing our share across categories, deepening customer engagement across channels, while investing in areas to widen our competitive advantage.

The holidays are here and our value proposition resonates with customers looking to save money as they celebrate. Operator, we’d now like to open the line for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. At this time we’ll be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Simeon Gutman: Hi. Good morning, everyone. I have one question, I’ll make it maybe two-parts. The first part, the legal expense it — so that we can judge whether or not we should keep it in. It sounds like you’re keeping it in. I’m not sure you’re able to share what the nature of it is, but it seems like it was unexpected. So if there’s any more color on it. And then the second real question is, alternative revenue and profit. Was it hidden in any way this quarter? Do we get an inflection, into next year, that seems to be the big investment question. And are we going to see it ramp up, and does it happen in a certain period or it just continues to build? Thank you.

John David Rainey: Simeon, I’ll start and others may want to jump in. On the legal expenses, those were related to — largely related to prior periods, and that was not anticipated within the quarter. It’s around $70 million to $75 million. So we would not expect that to recur into the fourth quarter. On the alternative revenue perhaps, I’ll start and let others jump in. Our plan is that we shared at Investor Day is somewhat dependent upon the level of investments that we’re having and seeing improving unit economics, but it’s also growing these parts of our business that are much higher margin. We talked about the growth in advertising across all segments quite frankly and international while it was slower in this quarter, we’ll see strong growth for the year.

All of these as they becoming a larger part of our overall business mix, you’re going to have an outsized contribution to our margin performance. So if you go back and you think about what we shared at Investor Day saying that we expect over the next several years to grow sales 4% and operating income greater than 4%, we would expect with each passing year, we’re going to see a greater contribution from these higher margin profit streams, which help us to improve our margin each year.

Doug McMillon: Simeon this is Doug. I would just add that I think you should have it in the continue to build category rather than in inflection.

Simeon Gutman: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Kelly Bania with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Kelly Bania: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just another follow-up, I guess on the legal expense. Assuming that impacted the U.S. EBIT number, but maybe you can clarify that. And just anything in particular that impacted the U.S. EBIT beyond maybe some unexpected expenses, did that come in relatively in line with your expectations? And I guess that’s sort of my first question. And then longer-term, as you think about this plan to grow EBIT faster than sales in coming years, anything you’re seeing with the consumer? And it sounds like it’s still choppy that maybe leaves you to reconsider how much you might flow through to the bottom-line?

John David Rainey: Sure. I’ll start and then, John, is probably going to want to jump in. Yes, the legal expenses hit the U.S. segment. There were some other items in there, like, I’ll point out that we spent a little bit more on remodels. We did an all-time high level of remodels in the quarter. But this is investing in our business, which we definitely want to lean into. We’re excited about the returns we’re seeing around that. We’re excited about the returns you’re seeing on e-commerce. And so there were some investments related to that, but the vast majority of the delta between our guidance and actual performance was related to the legal accrual. In terms of our long-term plan, and as it pertains to like possible changes in the consumer, I think our value proposition resonates more than ever when the consumer is pressured.

And we’ve seen this year that they not only are coming to us for the value that we provide, but also for the convenience and these are areas that we’re investing in. So we have a ton of conviction in the strategy that we have in our — in place and our ability to execute on that. We should separate that from calling out some maybe potential weakness or wobbling among the consumer that we saw in the back half of October. But we’re very excited about the plan we have in place.

John Furner: Hi, Kelly. It’s John. Good morning. First, I’m also excited about the topline results at 49% (ph) and then e-commerce at 24%, the team has made a lot of improvements, they should get the credit for that. You heard a couple of things there, one about remodels. As John David mentioned, we had a 117 remodels complete all on November 3. We think that’s the largest number of remodels, we’ve ever had complete in a single day. And then if you add together late October and November, it was 197 remodels and those remodels have improved, apparel improved, home, they have wider aisles. We’re really happy with the way the signing layout and they also have more investment for our online pickup and delivery business, which is a key catalyst for e-commerce growth and help us with being flexible for customers and any type of situation, they want to shop in, so there is some costs associated with that in the quarter but we feel great about those being investments for the long-term.

Doug McMillon: Kelly, this is Doug. And related to the last part of what you asked about, I don’t think there’s anything that causes us to think operating income won’t grow faster than sales. We’ve had really strong sales performance now for a few years. Obviously, we were impacted by what happens in our environment, but we expect to grow share. We expect to have a healthy topline and as it relates to operating income, we’ve got a really good multiyear plan with two primary dimensions, one is the automation investments that will — that drives productivity improvements and the other dimension is related to how the digital business has changed the shape of the income statement. Both of those things will be true, and it’s a multi-year plan that shows progress along the way.