Walmart Stores Inc. announced plans to close 269 stores in the United States and overseas, notes a company press release. But not in Arizona.
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“We invested considerable time assessing our stores and clubs and don’t take this lightly”, McMillon said.
Walmart says it hopes to place associates in positions at other locations.
There are almost 11,600 Walmart stores around the world, ranging from smaller Walmart Express stores to Neighborhood Markets, Walmarts, Walmart Supercenters and Sam’s Club warehouse outlets.
Wal-Mart announced Friday it will close 269 stores across the world, including 154 in the U.S. The closings will impact 16,000 employees, about 10,000 of whom are employed in the U.S.
But Wal-Mart has struggled to make small-format stores as profitable as Supercenters, in part because a small store can’t carry as many high margin items like clothes, appliances and lawn furniture. With the prices of goods likely fairly similar, one can easily say how Wal-Mart’s bottom line would be different with a $12.55 wage versus the nine states that either use the federal minimum or do not dictate a minimum of their own, including Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Residents’ pushback led them to scale back that plan, resulting in the grocery-only, 48,000-square-foot Walmart Neighborhood Market.
More than 95 percent of the stores set to be closed in the USA are within 10 miles of another Wal-Mart.
“Actively managing our portfolio of assets is essential to maintaining a healthy business”, Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Wal-Mart, said in a statement. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Wal-Mart Stores will post $4.54 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
The Neighborhood Market store in Greensboro is planning on opening January 27 at 1050 Alamance Church Road. If after that 60 days they still have not been placed in new jobs, they will receive a severance package equal to one week’s pay for every year they have been with the company, according to Wal-Mart spokeswoman Delia Garcia. But the company said today it was planning instead to focus on the mid-sized Neighborhood Markets, which are about the size of a grocery store, and its supercentres, which sell everything from avocados to windshield wipers.
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The retailer is closing 60 loss-making locations in Brazil, which account for 5 percent of sales in that market. Additionally, Sam’s Club plans to open in seven to 10 new locations. Internationally, Walmart intends to open between 200 and 240 stores during the coming year.
