This is driving me insane. With so many things going wrong here, so many stores and clubs being closed and so many good employees being laid off for cost cutting reasons, Wallmart drops $16 freaking billion on an Indian company.
Imagine if we actually invested that money in improving things here? You know, maybe save some of the jobs HERE?
This is so, so wrong...
For everyone that b--ches on here if you still are shopping at WalMart and giving them your money then you just need to STFU you are telling that greedy a-- company its ok what they sre doing.
Flipkart would have been a good investment had we not overreacted and overpaid for it. Instead we paid 16B for a company that cannot stop Bezos from entering the market. He is already building out infrastructure there.
All it does is accelerate the gutting of the US business.
None of this matters. There is a thread of truth and wisdom here, though. We might as well just hand the company over to our Indian masters. We are their b--chez now. They own us. They bend us over every day. Thank you, Walmart Leadership and Board of Directors.
The sad part is Wal-Mart is trying to push customers to buy online and they are just pushing them right over to Amazon because Wal-Mart's online game isn't as good.
The clubs that closed were underperforming and had no chance to turn around. Are you suggesting that Walmart should not close unprofitable locations? Sam’s has underperformed Costco for some time now and needs to make some hard decisions. This should have been done earlier.
The Flipkart investment had Board of Director approval, which also includes members of the Walton family. ML couldn’t have pulled off a transaction of this size off by himself. It is clearly a longer term play, and could result in significant upside, however, the hit to earnings from increased interest expense and operating losses is hefty in the short term.
The market opportunity in India is too significant for Walmart to be on the sidelines. WMT has saturated the US with stores and is investing in ecommerce capabilities, automation, and remodeling existing locations.
Why not invest in india? We have 325 million customers in the United states and a walmart on every street corner already. They have 1.3 billion people. The potential for growth is much higher in india.
Walmart bought it so Amazon couldn’t have it. ML is using Walmart as a tool to act out his longstanding grudge against Bezos. Amazon can just pretend to be interested in buying ecommerce properties, wait for Walmart to rush in with bigger offers, and then step back and watch Walmart spend themselves to death.
OP, I agree with you but it won’t happen because Walmart is a global company. Their interests don’t align with our national interests, which is why Trump’s tax cuts won’t save the US economy. Reading through Walmart’s statements, the next 3-5 years are going to be utter hell for the employees. Whether this flipcart deal is successful or not, it may be successful long term, employees for the next half decade will have to sacrifice and be sacrificied to make up for fliocarts losses.
Average wage in America = 50K
Average wage in India = 15K
Put yourself in the shoes of Execs whose ONLY GOAL is to turn as much profit as you can, which country would you invest in?
And please, dispel with the naive and childish notion that Execs for large corporations give a S__T about America or any country for that matter. They don't, they care about profit...period.