Walmart’s quarterly sales and profits smashed expectations on Thursday — one day after Target said its revenue dropped for the first time in six years as a result of customers’ “negative reaction” to its Pride Month collection.
Walmart’s earnings release showed that e-commerce increased a whopping 24% in the 13-week period ended July 28, buoyed mostly by pickup and delivery orders placed online.
Sales at stores and digital channels open for at least a year were up 6.4% — well above the 4% Bloomberg analysts expected — and international net sales increased 11%, to $27 billion.
Foot traffic was also up 2.8% across the Arkansas-based discount retailer’s portfolio of 10,500-plus locations.
The gains prompted Walmart to raise its annual profit forecast for the second straight quarter.
“We like our position for the back half of the year,” Walmart’s longtime chief executive, Doug McMillon, said in the earnings report.
Strong revenue was attributed to increased grocery sales, though McMillon pointed out that there were also encouraging results across general merchandise, especially at Sam’s Club, where membership income climbed 7%.
The Post has sought comment from Walmart.
Retail rival Target, meanwhile, lowered its profit goal for the full year after a dismal quarter where sales, foot traffic and inventory dipped.
The losses were attributed to consumers’ “negative reaction” to its Pride collection, which included “tuck-friendly” women’s swimwear and LGBTQ-friendly gear for infants and children that particularly outraged many shoppers.
Target’s CFO Michael Fiddelke addressed the Minneapolis-based retailer’s disastrous rainbow-clad collection in an earnings call on Wednesday, saying: “Traffic and top line trends were affected by the reaction to our Pride assortment.”
Sales at stores and digital channels open for at least a year were off 5.4% from a year earlier, according to Target’s Q2 earnings report released Wednesday, while digital sales slipped 10.5%.
Fiddelke said on the call that the retailer couldn’t quantify the impact the Pride collection alone had on comparable sales.
Target’s revenue for the three-month period ended July 29 was $24.8 billion — 4.9% lower than this time last year and worse than the company’s predictions.
The figure was slightly under the $25.2 billion economists expected, though the dip isn’t surprising considering Target’s stock lost nearly $14 billion as the Pride Month controversy grabbed headlines.
Though Walmart also offered items in celebration of Pride — part of its “Pride & Joy” collection — it seemed to fly under the radar of conservative pundits who, at the time, were accusing Target of grooming children with its merchandise, which included a children’s book titled “‘Twas the Night Before Pride,” and a handful of T-shirts donning LGBTQ-friendly slogans, like “live laugh lesbian.”
Target responded to the backlash by yanking some of its Pride items off shelves and relocating its celebratory displays father back in stores.
The move then caused Pride supporters to condemn the company for falling victim to “extremists,” leading to a boycott from customers on both sides of the political aisle.
Walmart, meanwhile, refused to make any changes to its LGBTQ+-friendly merchandise despite the fierce criticism Target was experiencing.
“We have merchandise that we sell all year that supports different groups,” Walmart chief merchandising officer Latriece Watkins said at the start of Pride Month in June. “In this particular case, we haven’t changed anything in our assortment.”
