Walmart’s e-commerce growth has been one of the key stories that media and investors have focused on since the company purchased Jet (and through the acquisition brought Lore into the fold), with the aim of hedging against Amazon’s explosive retail growth. Past hiccups in online growth have sent investors jittering, and it has won praise when posting growth of 30% or 40%.
What often gets lost in the discussion is that Walmart makes more than half a trillion dollars a year, most of it from brick-and-mortar retail. And it is a company used to making a profit from its operations. Much as investors and others focus on Walmart’s online efforts, the company’s physical retail business is still healthy. In fact, U.S. comparable sales just hit their highest mark in nine years.
