Reuters correspondent Jessica Wohl is attending today’s Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference Bank of America Merrill Lynch Consumer and Retail Conference, where Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s CFO Charles Holley* Bill Simon is giving a presentation.
There doesn’t appear to be a lot (yet) coming out of today’s event, but Wolh has tweeted some interesting tibits from Holley’s remarks, which we’ve embedded below:
Walmart U.S. CEO: Sold about 600,000 32-inch TVs in Black Friday deal & 100,000 more through .com when in-store inventory was depleted.
— Jessica Wohl (@jessicawohl) March 5, 2013
Death of the big box store? Not at Walmart: 125 new U.S. supercenters planned this year, plus 95-115 smaller stores
— Jessica Wohl (@jessicawohl) March 5, 2013
(This is exactly in line with what the retailer promised during another conference in October. Also noted: that 125 stores figure was unchanged from 2012.)
Bill Simon says Walmart sends about 10 million external emails a week. (Translation: Good luck figuring out who leaks $WMT info)
— Jessica Wohl (@jessicawohl) March 5, 2013
(What’s the deal with all the linked Wal-Mart e-mails lately? Bloomberg’s been on a tear with them lately.)
More updates as they are available.
Update: SeekingAlpha has a full transcript of Wal-Mart’s presentation here, and Wal-Mart hosts a PDF of the presentation here. SeekingAlpha also notes another interesting fact from the presentation, that Wal-Mart’s small store formats, including its Express stores abnd Neighborhood Markets, is beating dollar stores online and in quality perception. It’s also helping Wal-Mart beat grocers and drugstores on pricing.
More notes from Simon’s presentation:
Economic concerns of customers: Wal-Mart polling shows its customers are concerned about job security and job availability; taxes; rising food costs; and increased gas and energy costs.
Store format mix: Wal-Mart is approaching a portfolio of store formats that’s nearly half Supercenters and half small formats. In fiscal 2012, less than a quarter of its stores were small format. By fiscal 2014, more than a third of its stores will small format, with a 40 percent increase in those stores (95 to 114) from the previous fiscal year.
More Neighborhood Markets: Among the small format stores are Wal-Mart’s Neighborhood Markets, which concentrate on grocery and drug store items. Wal-Mart plans to expand those stores to more than 500 by fiscal 2016. Those stores will represent more than $10 billion in sales.
Testing Express: At the same time, Wal-Mart is still testing its smaller, less-than-20,000-SF Express stores. It has 10 Express stores, which concentrate on local products, drug store services, site-to-store delivery, financial services and gas.
(* Yep, we misidentified the conference. The Bank of America Merrill Lynch event is on March 12. Thanks to commenter JayNYC for setting us straight.)