Walmart Last Five Years Pro Formas

Walmart A) Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer, with global revenues of around $485 billion and profits of over $16.3 billion. The company is based in Bentonville, AR, and has stores in several countries around the world, including Mexico, China and Canada. Wal-Mart is America's largest retailer of groceries, and is one of the largest online retailers in the country as well.

Its major competitors are Target, Amazon, Costco (competitor to Sam's Club) and it competes with a host of other firms in each category in which it operates, as well as in other countries -- SuperChe in Mexico is a good example of a foreign Walmart competitor. Walmart has consistently expanded its product/service lines over the years. The company competes on a cost leadership strategy.

As a cost leader, Walmart seeks to acquire goods and move them through its system at a lower cost to consumer than competitors are capable of achieving. This strategy requires economies of scale in sourcing, and significant investment in logistics, both of which characterize Walmart. The company seeks to strip costs out of its operations at every possible place, a strategy that has allowed it to become the largest retailer in the world.

Walmart not only competes with its regular superstores, but also has an e-tailing site and competes with the Sam's Club warehouse stores as well. Walmart is known for its competencies in inventory management, logistics and overall supply chain management, and these form the basis for its competitive advantage. Walmart typically has much more geographic diversity than its competitors, but has failed in some international markets, particularly in Germany. Financially, Walmart remains a growing business, having gained 15.2% on its top line in the past five years.

This slow but steady growth is a function of the fact that in most of its markets, Walmart is already the largest retailer, leaving a mature market with only limited opportunities for growth. As befits a company that operates with a high-volume, low-margin price leadership strategy, Walmart has slim margins, earning only $16.3 billion on $485 billion last year. This is just a 3.3% net margin. As its business becomes more competitive, Walmart's margin has declined.

It was 3.8% five years ago, with net income being around the same, but revenues substantially lower at the time. The company's net profits have varied within a range for the past five years, again evidence that the market is stable and highly competitive. Nevertheless, Walmart continues to earn that $16 billion, give or take, every year, and this benefits the balance sheet. The company has steadily increased the shareholder's equity over this time, from $68.5 billion to $81.3 billion, as it pays out a fair amount of its profits in dividends.

Walmart has kept its total debt load relatively stable for the past four years, so growth has resulted in gains in the equity. The total debt load is not at all unreasonable for a company of its size, and with the large amount of fixed assets on its balance sheet. Walmart maintains a healthy balance sheet, with $9.1 billion in cash, and a sufficient ratio of current assets to current liabilities.

The long-term liabilities are lower today than they were this time last year, and are $3 billion lower than in 2012, indicating that Walmart has committed to a program of gradual debt reduction. The other balance sheet items are relatively stable, as makes sense for a company that is in a slow-growing, mature industry. Not surprisingly, most of its current assets are in inventories, which is tries to turn over with some frequency, around 8 times per year.

In this industry, the faster than the inventory moves, the quicker the cash conversion cycle, and the better that the company is performing. Walmart.