Walmart Q3 non-US revenues up on strong growth at Flipkart

Walmart-backed ecommerce platform Flipkart and its payments entity PhonePe have seen the number of monthly active customers reach an all time high, said Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart during the Q3 earnings call for the Bentonville headquartered company. 

The company registered a 1.3% increase year-on-year in net sales from international operations which stood at $29.6 billion for Q3 2020, led by strong topline growth at Flipkart as well as the company’s businesses in Canada and Mexico. 

The gross profit rate also increased by 90 basis points during the quarter primarily due to Flipkart, according to the earnings presentation.

“Flipkart continues to perform well and recently completed its best ever Big Billion Days sales event in October. Their third quarter GMV continued to reflect strong demand post-COVID lockdowns, with significant growth in monthly active customers,” said McMillon during the earnings call. 

Walmart International CEO, Judith McKenna said that the retail giant was working on a new strategy to power local businesses powered by Walmart with flexible ownership structures. She further added, “We're going to continue to focus on the market at the time. Our priority markets are clear -- India, China, Mexico and Canada, but actually every market that we have plays a role in the portfolio in some way.” 

Walmart holds a majority stake in Flipkart’s business in India. 

Earlier this year, Flipkart acquired the business-to-business operations of Walmart India to launch its own b2b marketplace, Flipkart Wholesale. Since then it has been aggressively growing its digital b2b business. In its last year of existence, Walmart India as a standalone entity posted losses of Rs 299 crore for the financial year 2019-20. 

Overall, Walmart reported a 5.2% increase year-on-year in total revenue to $134.7 billion. Net sales growth in the US slowed down year-on-year.

In November, Flipkart announced the acquisition of mobile gaming company MechMocha and AR startup, Scapic.