Imagine serving nearly 270 million customers a week in 28 countries and generating $500.3 billion in revenue. Those are Walmart’s stats cited by its CEO Doug McMillon at last week’s annual shareholder meeting.
“We are a growth company,” he said – “we just happen to be a big one.”
McMillon cited Walmart’s international investment, including JD.com in China. “We’ve announced bold steps like our investment in India’s Flipkart and the proposed combination with Sainsbury’s in the U.K. so that our Asda colleagues are positioned to thrive. Meaningful change is rarely easy but it’s essential to set us up for success in the future.”
Walmart finds itself defending its turf as Amazon enters into groceries. Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs noted that when Walmart entered groceries in 1996, experts called it a risky bet. At the time, it had sales of $100 billion. With 2017 sales of $500 billion today, “I’d say it was a pretty good idea to get into groceries,” he said.
CEO McMillon noted that Walmart was working on areas that were important to its customers. For example, he said, “Did you know that every banana we sell at Walmart, Sam’s Club or Asda is now sourced from a sustainably certified farm? Last year, in the U.S. alone, we sold over a billion pounds of bananas… that’s billions of bananas.”
You can read more about the annual shareholder meeting voting results and presentations through the following links:
Walmart Annual Shareholders Meeting Voting Results (link)
Transcript of Walmart CEO Doug McMillon’s remarks to shareholders (link)
Transcript of Walmart CFO Brett Biggs’s remarks to shareholders (link)
Amazing how they don’t have a loss of audio just as the important question and answer period is about to start. Not sure if they even had a Webcast of this meeting but at least it did not become what the meeting was and would be remembered for. I guess they have nothing to hide from their shareholders or the public.