Global retail leader Walmart has announced its results for the fourth quarter and full-year of fiscal 2014, with 12-month net sales climbing while consolidated net income attributable to the group dropped.
For the year-long period, consolidated net sales were US$473.1bn, an increase of 1.6 per cent over fiscal year 2013. Net sales included approximately US$5.1bn of negative impact from currency exchange rate fluctuations and included a favourable impact of approximately US$0.7bn from acquisitions.
However, consolidated net income attributable to Walmart was US$16.0bn, a decrease of 5.7 per cent.
'Our company grew net sales this year to reach more than US$473bn,' said Doug McMillon, Wal-Mart Stores president and chief executive officer. 'Global eCommerce sales, including acquisitions, surpassed the US$10bn mark, a 30 per cent increase over last year. We will continue to grow our global business by focusing on customers and serving them how they want to be served.'
Fourth-quarter sales climbed 1.4 percent to US$128.8bn, with net income down 21 per cent to US$4.4bn.
'Comp sales improvement is a key priority, and we’ll focus on being even stronger item and category merchants, delivering value and improving our service levels,' McMillon noted. 'We’ll remain focused on our expense structure, and innovate to improve productivity and aid our ability to deliver every day low prices. Our EDLP approach earns trust with customers and helps us keep our cost structure low.
'We’ll invest aggressively in e-commerce and increase our small store rollout in the US, as we’ve done in several other countries, to deliver value and convenience,' he added. 'Today, we are announcing an increased capital allocation, above our previous forecast, to accelerate small store growth in the US. The combination of supercenters and smaller formats closer to customers’ homes, along with e-commerce and mobile commerce, will enable us to increase our relevance for the Walmart brand around the world.'
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