Walmart India Subsidiaries Seeing 'Strong Growth' And Retailer Has Plans To Further Capitalize On The Market

Walmart Inc’s WMT Indian e-commerce unit Flipkart and payments platform Phone Pe delivered strong growth in the first quarter, the retail giant's President and CEO Doug McMillan told investors in a post-earnings call.

What Happened: PhonePe’s annualized total payment value run rate grew by more than 150% compared with a year ago while Flipkart’s monthly active customers — a key sales measure — is performing well, McMillan told investors.

Walmart International, the company’s second-largest unit which contributed about 12% sales during the quarter, posted an 8.3% decline to $27.3 billion. The international arm includes the company’s operations in India along with other markets such as China, Japan, Africa, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada, and Chile.

“International delivered strong Q1 results with net sales growth of 5.1% in constant currency, including strength in India, Canada and China, despite many markets being negatively affected toward the end of the quarter by a resurgence of COVID,” Walmart CFO Brett Biggs told investors.

See Also: Walmart's Indian Unit Expands E-Commerce Footprint In Challenge To Amazon

The company also said it had forged a commercial partnership with India’s Adani Group to strengthen logistics and data centers. 

“We need to continue to add new capabilities including such areas as logistics and data storage. The recently announced partnership with Adani group would help us to do just that," McMillan said.

Why It Matters: The Bentonville-based retailer’s total revenue rose 2.7% to $138.3 billion in the first quarter, beating street expectations of $132 billion. Net income attributable to the company fell 31.6% to $2.73 billion. 

Walmart is yet to see a major breakthrough in India's rapidly growing e-grocery market that is currently dominated by Amazon.com Inc AMZN and Alibaba Group Holdings-backed BABA BigBasket. India’s top conglomerate Reliance Industries last year forayed in the new commerce venture with its omnichannel retail platform JioMart that presents another challenge to existing players in the space.

Price Action: Walmart shares closed 2.17% higher at $141.91 on Tuesday.

Photo by Nicholas Eckhart on Flickr