What Is Walmart’S Parent Company?
Who owns Walmart?
Sam Walton’s heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through both their holding company Walton Enterprises and their individual holdings. Walmart was the largest United States grocery retailer in 2019, and 65 percent of Walmart’s US$ 510.329 billion sales came from U.S. operations.
The company was incorporated as Wal-Mart, Inc. on October 31, 1969, and changed its name to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in 1970. The same year, the company opened a home office and first distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas. It had 38 stores operating with 1,500 employees and sales of $44.2 million. It began trading stock as a publicly held company on October 1, 1970 and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The first stock split occurred in May 1971 at a price of $47 per share. By this time, Walmart was operating in five states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma; it entered Tennessee in 1973 and Kentucky and Mississippi in 1974. As the company moved into Texas in 1975, there were 125 stores with 7,500 employees and total sales of $340.3 million.
In November 2005, Walmart announced several environmental measures to increase energy efficiency and improve its overall environmental record, which had previously been lacking. The company’s primary goals included spending $500 million a year to increase fuel efficiency in Walmart’s truck fleet by 25 percent over three years and double it within ten; reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in seven years; reduce energy use at stores by 30 percent; and cut solid waste from U.S. stores and Sam’s Clubs by 25 percent in three years. CEO Lee Scott said that Walmart’s goal was to be a “good steward of the environment” and ultimately use only renewable energy sources and produce zero waste. The company also designed three new experimental stores with wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, biofuel -capable boilers, water-cooled refrigerators, and xeriscape gardens. In this time, Walmart also became the biggest seller of organic milk and the biggest buyer of organic cotton in the world, while reducing packaging and energy costs. In 2007, the company worked with outside consultants to discover its total environmental impact and find areas for improvement. Walmart created its own electric company in Texas, Texas Retail Energy, planned to supply its stores with cheap power purchased at wholesale prices. Through this new venture, the company expected to save $15 million annually and also to lay the groundwork and infrastructure to sell electricity to Texas consumers in the future.
On March 20, 2009, Walmart announced that it was paying a combined US$933.6 million in bonuses to every full and part-time hourly worker. This was in addition to $788.8 million in profit sharing, 401 (k) pension contributions, hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandise discounts, and contributions to the employees’ stock purchase plan. While the economy at large was in an ongoing recession, Walmart reported solid financial figures for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2009, with $401.2 billion in net sales, a gain of 7.2 percent from the prior year. Income from continuing operations increased 3 percent to $13.3 billion, and earnings per share rose 6 percent to $3.35.
As of April 30, 2021, [update] Walmart has 10,526 stores and clubs in 24 countries, operating under 48 different names. The company operates under the name Walmart in the United States and Canada, as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America, and as Flipkart Wholesale in India.
Walmart Discount Stores, also branded as simply “Walmart”, are discount department stores with sizes varying from 30,000 to 221,000 square feet (2,800 to 20,500 square meters), with the average store covering 106,000 square feet (9,800 square meters). They carry general merchandise and limited groceries. Some newer and remodeled discount stores have an expanded grocery department, similar to Target’s PFresh department. Many of these stores also feature a garden center, pharmacy, Tire & Lube Express, optical center, one-hour photo processing lab, portrait studio, a bank branch, a cell phone store, and a fast food outlet. Some also have gasoline stations. Discount Stores were Walmart’s original concept, though they have since been surpassed by Supercenters.
In the mid-1990s, Walmart tried with a large financial investment to get a foothold in the German retail market. In 1997, Walmart took over the supermarket chain Wertkauf with its 21 stores for DM 750 million and the following year Walmart acquired 74 Interspar stores for DM 1.3 billion. The German market at this point was an oligopoly with high competition among companies which used a similar low price strategy as Walmart. As a result, Walmart’s low price strategy yielded no competitive advantage. Walmart’s corporate culture was not viewed positively among employees and customers, particularly Walmart’s “statement of ethics”, which attempted to restrict relationships between employees, a possible violation of German labor law, and led to a public discussion in the media, resulting in a bad reputation among customers. In July 2006, Walmart announced its withdrawal from Germany due to sustained losses. The stores were sold to the German company Metro during Walmart’s fiscal third quarter. Walmart did not disclose its losses from its German investment, but they were estimated to be around €3 billion.