Walmart’s push to boost its online shopping business is starting to pay off, but it’s an expensive purchase.Online sales at largest U.S. retailer rose 60 percent during the most recent quarter, as the company benefited from a slew of investments in online shopping sites.That sales boost has come at a cost — Walmart spent a bunch of cash buying up sites like online shoe seller Shoebuy.com, outdoor retailer Moosejaw and menswear company Bonobos. It also spent over $3 billion to buy Jet.com last fall.And the vast majority of the company’s sales continue to come from stores, where foot traffic was up just 1.3 percent during the most recent quarter. (Rival superstore Target did better, posting a 2 percent increase.)The company’s stock price fell after it released results, suggesting that people were more concerned about the sluggish pace of sales in stores than they were excited about Walmart’s growing expertise online, but even so, the stock is still up 15 percent for the year so far.
Other notable details:
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- Walmart has a deeply comfortable lead as the biggest retailer in America, according to the National Retail Federation’s rankings: the company’s annual 2016 sales of $362.8 billion were more than triple that of the number-two retailer, the supermarket chain Kroger.
- About 90 percent of the U.S. population now lives within 10 miles of a Walmart, chief executive C. Douglas McMillon said in a post-earnings conference call with analysts.
- Walmart is the country’s largest private employer, with 1.5 employees in the U.S. and at total of 2.3 million worldwide last year.