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Walmart released its Q3 earnings results on Tuesday, and the retail giant is firing on all cylinders as its heads into the heart of the holiday season. Comp sales were up 5.3%. E-commerce sales increased 27%. Advertising revenues were up 28%, and membership income was 22%.
Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the report:
Bigger tickets: While Walmart in recent quarters has prioritized volume over price, there was a slight slowdown in volume growth in Q3. Transactions slowed from 3.4% to 3.1%, while average ticket size increased 2.1%, up from 1.5% in the same period last year.
As for the increase in ticket size, Walmart US President and CEO John Furner told shareholders that it was the result of getting its assortment right for the fall season. “Seasons are important,” he said. “We ended October with a strong Halloween.”’
Fashion-forward: Relatedly, executives acknowledged that Walmart is moving into new categories that it had previously left to its competitors.
“Over the years, we had a really strong market share in categories like toys, bicycles, but we had a lower market share in a lot of the fashion categories,” CEO Doug McMillon said in the call. “That’s basically just the customer telling us over the years, ‘I’d rather buy my apparel somewhere else.’”
But now Walmart sees an opportunity to increase market share in categories such as fashion, as its price and convenience attracts more shoppers from higher income levels. He added earlier that households making more than $100,000 accounted for 75% of share gains.
Inflation to deflation: Looking more closely at prices, CFO John David Rainey said inflation has “remained close to flat for the past four quarters, with Q3 general merchandise and consumables deflationary and food inflationary in the low-single digits.”
He noted that general merchandise sales are rising despite deflation, and singled out hardlines such as home and toys as performing well: “It was nice to see general merchandise grow low-single digits in the US even as prices are deflated by over 4%.”