Obviously, this goes on for another month or so, but it's pretty encouraging when the biggest retailer in the United States is, it provides for me just as a consumer, as someone who is interested in business, and as someone who is interested in the market doing well in general, it provides a pretty nice balance to the retail report that you mentioned earlier. Because it's the second-most-important season for retailers and the language we got out of management off of the call and off of interviews this morning was they're seeing a strong start in back-to-school sales.
I was interested in what Walmart says about back to school.
One of the things I was looking at coming into this report and we're going to get Target's ( TGT -3.25%) report on Wednesday morning. Hill: Absolutely, I know he doesn't get as much attention as other CEOs, but Doug McMillon has built up a pretty great track record as CEO of Walmart. Because at $141 billion in sales in the quarter, how do you increase that? You've got to go to places like China and India where those sales exist. It's not enough just to expand your footprint if you're Walmart, you've got to do it with a lot of strategic direction, and you have to go where those gross dollars are. But I like the way that they're paying attention to where the growth is around the globe. The company's international sales were down this quarter just because they don't own as many of those international properties. One thing that I want to chat with you about is the shifting of the parts and pieces in Walmart's global revenue.Įarlier this year, management said, we're going to trim some of these more mature markets where we operate in the U.K, in Argentina, for example, we're going to trim our presence there, but we're going to keep investing in places like Canada, and India, and China. But I really liked what I saw, I liked the balance. are down, I think 1.1%, so maybe looking past this quarter and looking ahead, investors might be getting a little bit nervous about what this means for its sales in the current quarter. We got an economic report that said retail sales in the U.S. But as you mentioned, Chris, the market is down.
Today, they said that the e-commerce sales are on track to reach $75 billion by the end of the year as an annualized number. That just shows you how much that e-commerce piece has grown. I love that their e-commerce sales grew 6% on top of a really difficult comparison from the prior year when everyone was stuck at home. This is the same way, and yet the company continues to generate increases in sales, really significant increases in profits. It's like those little visualizations on YouTube, when you asked, "Hey, how big is the cosmos, how many stars are there out there?" Take a look and you realize how massive that number is. Walmart's stock is doing well, as you mentioned, that $141 billion in revenue for one quarter boggles the mind for a retailer.