Flipkart’s annual Big Billion Day sales boosted US retail major Walmart’s sales in the quarter ending January (Q4) although it hurt the company’s profit margin for the period. The Big Billion Day- Flipkart's annual festive sale event in October 2023 touted as the ‘largest ever’- brought 1.4 billion customer visits to the platform, a top Walmart executive said. This also marked the first time that Walmart crossed $100 billion in global e-commerce sales, he said.
Walmart's Q4 profits
Walmart saw its international sales grow 13 per cent to $31.2 billion in Quarter 4, led by Flipkart. However, gross profit margin dropped by 39 basis points due to the timing shift of Flipkart's event from Q3 in FY23 to Q4 in FY24. In the same period, Walmart International’s advertising business grew 76 per cent led by Flipkart. In the quarter ended January 31, Walmart earned $5.49 billion compared to $6.27 billion in the year-ago quarter. Its sales rose 5.7 percent to $173.38 billion.
Read more: Flipkart in talks to buy Reliance-backed Dunzo? ‘Yet to materialize as…’
Challenges Flipkart faces
Flipkart let go of around 1,000 employees, 5 percent of its total workforce, as part of its annual performance review exercise, it was reported last month. Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy told Moneycontrol, “If you just look at the gap between the people who bought once, which is let's say 500 million versus people who buy monthly, there is a massive opportunity there. A lot of our focus goes towards bridging that gap. That is the big opportunity we see. We are not focused on expanding that 500-600 million to 800 million And a lot of things which we do about travel and health and financial services, all of those are in that direction.”