Walmart at Bernstein Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Wednesday, 28 May 2025, Walmart International (NYSE:WMT) presented its strategic vision at the Bernstein 41st Annual Strategic Decisions Conference 2025. Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, highlighted the company’s focus on omnichannel leadership across its 18 markets, with a keen eye on growth opportunities and challenges. While Walmart International aims for significant expansion, it faces economic softening and competition in key regions.

Key Takeaways

• Walmart International targets $200 billion in GMV by 2028, with plans to double profits.
• High-growth markets include India, Mexico, and China, with a focus on e-commerce.
• Supply chain diversification and resilience are key strategic priorities.
• E-commerce profitability is a focus, with successful models in China and India.
• Walmart emphasizes digital and financial inclusion initiatives in Mexico.

Financial Results

• Walmart International aims to reach $200 billion in GMV by 2028.
• The company plans to double its profit and improve margins.
• E-commerce penetration is set to increase, enhancing overall profitability.
• Flipkart in India is on a path to profitability, with QuickCommerce accounting for 20% of the e-commerce market.

Operational Updates

• Focus on high-growth markets: India, Mexico, and China.
• In China, 50% of sales are online, supported by urban delivery models and dark fulfillment centers.
• India’s Flipkart is expanding its QuickCommerce offerings, with a focus on tier two and three cities.
• Mexico’s strategy includes digital connectivity through Byte and a loyalty program, Beneficius.

Future Outlook

• Walmart is open to new market entries, primarily through marketplace opportunities.
• The company will expand existing markets like India, Mexico, and China, leveraging learnings from successful e-commerce strategies.
• Continued emphasis on supply chain resilience and diversification, with support for local manufacturing.

Q&A Highlights

• No major portfolio changes are expected, with a focus on existing markets.
• E-commerce profitability varies by market, with some already profitable.
• In Mexico, Walmart is committed to building an omnichannel ecosystem and addressing economic challenges with the bodega format.
• Walmart’s supply chain strategy includes diversifying manufacturing bases and sourcing from over 70 countries.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed understanding of Walmart’s strategic direction.

Full transcript - Bernstein 41st Annual Strategic Decisions Conference 2025:

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Alright. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Bernstein’s strategic decisions conference. My name is Jiha Ma. I’m Bernstein’s frontlines and heartlines retail senior analyst.

And today, I’m very pleased to be joined by Cath MacLeigh, who’s Walmart International’s president and CEO. Just some brief introduction, Cass has held a number of senior roles at Walmart over the past ten years from finance to supply chain and from leading Sam’s Club to most recently Walmart International. And, Cass, a warm welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.

It’s nice to be here with you all. Thank you. And and also just to provide some context on the Walmart International segment, it is Walmart’s second biggest segment behind Walmart US, generates about over $120,000,000,000 of net sales with $5,500,000,000 of EBIT, easily bigger than some of the publicly traded companies out there. It is also a very diverse international portfolio spanning across, I think, 18 markets out there. So quite a complex business, to be honest.

And and, Cath, with that in mind, since you took over the very complex portfolio two years ago, you have been on the road a lot. What have you learned? What have

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: you observed? Yeah. I think, I would start with it is you know, I think when I started in the role, I thought it was complex. And where I have landed now is it’s not so much complex. It’s just vibrant.

Because, yes, it is 18 markets, but there is such a commonality through it all. I mean, you can you can fall into the trap of looking at international and think it’s a portfolio of businesses. And truly, it’s not because what I have learned through getting out to visit each of them is that we have a common ambition. We wanna be the leading omnichannel retailer in every market that we’re in. And our purpose, which is to help people save money and live better, is very richly represented in each of those markets.

And our values and our way of operating and EDLP, EDLC, everyday low prices, everyday low cost, absolutely foundational in each of those markets. And so what you end up is having a lot more commonality than divergence, but each of those countries have their own local expression of what Walmart is or Sam’s Club is. So I think what I have what has hit me most is that, yes, there is in first glance complexity, but when you truly look at it, there’s so much commonality and vibrancy in international. It’s kinda captivating.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s a great intro. And, Cath, what is your long term goal with the international business? Right? Is it about entering new markets, growing in existing ones, growing profitability, or a combination of these? Yeah.

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: I think the over time, we have done a great job in curating the markets that we’re in. So we are truly in high growth markets at the moment. So we I think if you look at the composition of the of the countries, India, Mexico and China are the three high growth markets that we’re really excited about. And then we have markets where we see future growth, like Africa. And we have other markets that we’re in because of the commonalities, so Canada and even down to Chile.

And there’s a lot of opportunity to unlock the omnichannel retail opportunities in those markets. So very happy with the portfolio of countries that we’ve curated for the now, but always scanning to see, with an eye to the future. You know, we have traditionally, in the past, looked at entrants into markets based on either doing kind of a business, you know, joint venture or finding a partner and entering via bricks and mortar. I think the world has changed, and there’s much more of an opportunity to enter from a marketplace perspective these days. So we are always open and scanning, but very happy with the, curated number of markets that we’re in right now.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Great. And, looking backwards, actually, Walmart did divest from a number of countries in the past, including The UK and Japan back in 2021. That was, of course, before you took over the whole business. Do you expect any other major portfolio changes or optimization from here?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: When you look at those markets that we divest from, think each of them have been an amazing learning opportunity, and each of them has added something to our way of operating business. So ASDA taught us a lot about pickup and delivery. I think even, like, when we went into Germany, we learned a lot about not going in with too much of a US centric model. So if you look at now Sam’s Club China, which is hugely successful, they have taken the Sam’s Club model, but the merchandise is truly tailored to the Chinese consumer. And so we’ve really learned over the years as we’ve had markets that we’ve ended up divesting from, each of them have taught us something, and it’s the richness of those learnings that have makes the current portfolio so strong.

If you look at how we’re positioned within the enterprise, international is, accretive to growth on the top and the bottom line and is truly a growth driver for the enterprise. So we have the we have the right group right now, and we are positioned to be, you know, the growth engine both on top and bottom line, and that’s a really nice place to be.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s great to hear. And, Kathy, you kind of alluded to potentially being open to new markets. Are there any new markets that you’re looking to enter? And and, also, what can you learn from the the past experiences? Yeah.

I think

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: we’re always open and looking, but we don’t have anything on the slate. I would love to say Australia, but that’s more out of personal interest because I have family there than actually out of business interest. So we’re always open to looking, but there’s nothing that we’re particularly, like, wanting to talk about now.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That makes sense. And from a profitability perspective, is there an ambition for the international business to close the margin gap with The US business, and and what does it take to get there?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yes. So we’ve talked about, like, our ambitions in international. We see the pathway within the planning horizon to get to being a 200,000,000,000 GMV segment, and I think that’s by 2028. We’ve also talked about, you know, doubling our profit. We’ve talked about increasing the e com penetration.

So some really big, lofty kind of goals that are well within our grasp. And on top of that, we also see ourselves as being accretive to both top and bottom line. And as we do all of that, we’re improving our margins and our return on investment. So all of those kind of things come together to be, like, the goal and ambition and the role that we play within Walmart enterprises.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Great. Thank you. And, a slight digression because I know, Cass, you led Walmart’s supply chain, function a couple of years ago, so I can’t really pass on the opportunity to ask you about supply chain in this really uncertain tariff environment. How is Walmart adapting the global sourcing and supply chain in today’s context?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: So I have the, wonderful benefit of also running global sourcing, in this role. And so in that capacity, we’re looking at providing all of the sourcing for Walmart US and Sam’s US as well as for international. And we have been working over the last five years at building out resiliency in our supply chain. I was in Asia a few weeks ago, and we were talking with suppliers there. And, one of them thanked us for the role that we played because five years ago, we started talking to them about diversifying their manufacturing base.

So that particular supplier has manufacturing, you know, in a number of different countries, including Vietnam and Cambodia and China, and now they have pivoted their business. So the China businesses manufacture for our China retail, and Vietnam and Cambodia are manufacturing for The US. And so we have been working on this strategy over the number of years to be able to look at how we build resilient supply chains. You know, I always wanna anchor back on the fact that two thirds of our products are actually manufactured in The US, and the rest, we source from over 70 countries. And I think that puts us in a really good position to be able to have many kind of multiple levers that we look at as we’re looking at sourcing those kind of items.

And so resiliency in the supply chain, but also surety to ensure if there is disruption in any part of the supply chain, we have kind of secondary sources of supply.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s great. I promise I’ll circle back to supply chain afterwards. But now let’s return to the international business, and I wanna focus on ecommerce specifically. It is, I think, close to 25% of international net sales, over 50% of China sales for Walmart, and it’s already profitable. Right?

Can you shed some light on how ecommerce turned into profitability faster in some of the international markets, China notably compared to The US?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yeah. So let me just break that down a little bit. What we have announced is that it is profitable for the company. International isn’t profitable yet, but we are profitable in particular markets and in particular channels. And so it just depends how you cut and dice it across the organization.

I think China is a wonderful proof point. So, in China, Fifty Percent, of our, of our sales is online versus offline. And if you look at that, go back seven years, I think only 4% of our business was online. So it’s a huge, like, change in the shift of the business, and we are profitable in both channels in China. I think what we have done is build out a model there that is highly effective, that works in urban, high density areas, and has set ourselves up to be able to deliver in less than an hour.

That, from a customer value proposition, is really resonating with the member, and also from an economics perspective is really helping from a profitability perspective. And I think we look at that particular equation of profitability and have been looking at, okay. How do we now bring that to another market like like India? India, there’s this huge growth in quick commerce, and we’ve been sharing learnings from China across to our India team as they’ve been building out what they call their minutes business to address the ability to be able to deliver in less than fifteen minutes.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s very, very interesting. Lot to to dive into at Impact there. Kathy, you mentioned a couple of numbers just now in terms of your ambition for international GMV and profitability. Can you talk about the ecommerce side specifically? Right?

Can you shed some light on the profitability angle of international ecommerce? How do you expect it to grow from here from a GMV and profitability perspective?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yeah. So if I try and, like, take that the next click down. So if we look at ecommerce profitability, as I said, we’re profitable in some markets, and we’re profitable in some channels. So, you know, we are constantly looking at that scale of speed versus convenience as well as kind of the maturity of the ecommerce businesses. So, you know, let’s take Flipkart, for example.

We entered the market in, I think, 02/2018, and that business is on its path to profitability. The original premise for Flipkart was how do we bring branded items to tier two, three cities? If you grew up in a tier two or tier three city in India, you it wasn’t so easy to get access to products like Levi’s. And so what they saw is a market opportunity to be able to help bring great items to those to those centers, where in the past, people would have had to travel into a tier one city. And so that was the original premise.

And if you look at the categories that, the original categories that Flipkart had, it was like mobile phones, electronics, getting into apparel, and those businesses have become have found their way to profitability. But as we’re doing that, we’ve also been looking at how do we expand both the assortment and the offering. India is a market, 1,400,000,000 people. I think the addressable, like, opportunity is, like, $1,000,000,000,000, and ecommerce is only about 9% penetrated. And so we see huge opportunity in that market, and we have been growing the Flipkart business.

Over the last number of years, QuickCommerce emerged as a massive kind of trend in in India, and QuickCommerce is delivery within fifteen minutes. And so as we’ve been on our path to profitability with what I would call the core business, we’ve now started, like, investing into emerging areas. We have 250, fulfillment centers that are minutes fulfillment centers that deliver within minutes. So go back a year. We used to deliver at best within a day.

It was a one to two day promise. Now we have a fifteen minute promise, and sometimes we can deliver in as short as three minutes. Like, those capabilities are, you know, insane for me. They’re kinda mind blowing. But what you know, as we’ve been on that path to profitability, you now invest into a new emerging area.

QuickCommerce is about 20% of the ecommerce market now in India, and it’s about it’s got a 50% growth trajectory. So that’s a part of, like, ecommerce that we wanna be playing in. So it’s not like a linear path to profitability, but we have so many proof points across international where we have been able to get to profitability not just in the market, but within the channel that we’re really bullish about, like, this trajectory that we’re on. We also have other markets like Canada, which has a very similar footprint to The US, and we have been working in international and moving to global platforms. How do we bring the best of tech that we have across the enterprise, to the benefit of each of the markets?

And probably some of the best in class tech that we have is in The US. So we have been taking capabilities like the Walmart commerce platform or even Connect, which is digital advertising, or, WFS, Walmart fulfillment services, that are very established capabilities in The US, and we’re bringing them to Canada. And all of those capabilities will help them on their path to profitability. So lots of work underway. Very excited about, like, the growth trajectory that we’re on.

Very excited about the upside that we see in ecommerce. And, yeah, we feel like we’re just getting started.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s impressive. Under three minutes in some of

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: the Yeah. And and let’s maybe maybe not share that because I wanna talk about that at shareholders next week. But, that like, when when you hear that fact, it does blow your mind in the absolute kind of upside and opportunity that’s there. Like, like, I I don’t think I don’t know what you can do in three minutes. Like, that’s not a large amount of time.

And for the order to be able to be created, dropped, picked, and delivered within that period of time is kinda mind blowing. Wow. Okay. So, again, a lot

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: to unpack there. I wanna circle back to India in a second, but maybe let’s start with China in terms of the individual markets. I have had a chance to visit some of the Sam’s Club in China myself. And for those of you who haven’t seen it in person, it is truly the number one club on the ground. Pretty much all my family friends have a Sam’s Club membership in China.

Now why do you think that’s the case? Why is it doing so much better than competition and also the traditional Walmart supercenter format on the ground?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Well, I’d start with the fact that we have been in that market for twenty nine years. And over those years, we’ve been refining the Sam’s Club model to make sure that it is relevant, and that it really resonates with the consumer. And I think the coupling of really high quality assortment at disruptive prices, that’s that’s the magic of Sam’s Club, along with the convenience of one hour delivery, has really positioned it as both, kind of an aspirational, brand, but also, a brand that’s very much within reach. And so the team have done an extraordinary job of being able to couple together the ability to have an experience when you shop in the club. So for people who actually want to go to a retail outlet and shop in person, the experience is delightful.

I mean, you know, there’s a lot of sampling. There’s a lot of demos. It’s interactive. And so you have the that part of the experience. And then right alongside it, you have the benefit of the one hour delivery.

And the way they have done it is that you actually have at the center the club, and around it, you will have about eight to 10 clouds. And a cloud is a dark fulfillment center that is tethered to that particular club. And those clouds allow us high efficient, and, obviously, a fit quick delivery out to the customer base. And so it’s almost like you have an invisible, like, delivery network kind of tethered to that one location. But I think at the end of the day, the magic all comes back to having great items, and our merchants have created some extraordinary items that the that our members love.

I had the opportunity to go and visit with a couple of, customers and members in their house last year, in I think I was in Shenzhen, it was wonderful to kinda hear why what was their personal experience of Sam’s Club and why did they shop there. And, you know, I think it anchored on the the two things of one, we really like the items. Like, at the moment, they have this wasabi covered macadamia nut, which I am so addicted to. I’ve got people coming over shareholders next week, and I asked them to bring me some packets of it. They’ve just got really great items.

But on top of that, this, member was sharing with me that in so many retailers that, you know, she’s shopped in the past, you have to be, like, the, the bargain hunter for your household. You have to get coupons. You have to sign up for membership. You have to look online for deals. You have to clip, you know, different tickets to take with you, and then you front up to the counter, and you hand over all your different ways to be able to get a bargain and a discount.

And at Sam’s Club, you don’t have to do any of that because it is very much anchored on EDLP. And this sense of trust that I don’t have to do all of that work because you’re gonna do the work for me, and I can just trust that if I turn up and buy the goods, that they’re gonna be priced at the most disruptive prices that I can get. So trust is a really, really important question for us in China with the consumer.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: No. Absolutely. And and you also mentioned that ecommerce is already profitable in China. That’s for a business where 80% of orders are delivered under one hour. Not three minutes, but an hour is still very quick.

How is that possible? Is it enabled by the cloud business? And which part of that can be potentially applicable in The

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: US context? Yes. It’s definitely enabled by the cloud. So as I said, there’s eight to 10 clouds all around that one facility, our mechanism to be able to deliver quickly but also cost efficiently. We’re very, very, disciplined about the execution of those clouds too.

So we have a model around how many square foot, to to allocate to them. They only have a thousand SKUs in them. So whereas we would have 3,000 SKUs in a Sam’s Club, there’s only a thousand that are available online. We are constantly refining what are the right thousand based on what customers are looking to purchase. But, you know, the location, the square footage, the number of associates, the number of SKUs enable us to be able to do that kinda profitably.

And so I think, you know, the discipline and understanding how to build out that equation. And in regard to, like, the applicability, like, yes. Absolutely. There is applicability to The US, but I I would just I would make two points on that. First of all, it works in those markets because they are high dense urban areas.

And I don’t know that we have the exact same, like, level of density of population that would enable you to deliver within that speed. However, I mean, when you look at Walmart US, the growth that they’re seeing in Walmart Express where the customer is nominating that they want that within within, you know, I think it’s a one to three hour promise, and they’re willing to pay for it. I think that has shown that customers are willing to pay for, to get access to products quickly. But the other, way that we’ve looked at as well is what are the other markets throughout international that we can learn from this from? So when we saw the rise in QuickCommerce, our CEO of Flipkart asked me, where can I learn across Walmart Enterprise about speed?

And I pointed him to China. So he sent a team over to the clouds, and they understood and learned from that. And then they took it back to India, and they said, okay. A thousand items in under an hour. We wanna do 6,000 items in under fifteen minutes.

And then they iterated on that, and now they’ve worked out how to do that and what is their equation around square footage, proximity, number of orders, number of associates, speed. And they will keep refining on that model, and then that they will, like, then pass those learnings back to China, but also to other markets. Mexico is also actively working in this, like, group of trying to work through how do we get quick delivery. And then we layer on top of that the work that The US is doing on drones, and that is super exciting. And, you know, they’ve now rolled from having some locally in Arkansas to actually rolling out drones in in Dallas, in the Dallas market as well too.

So all of this points us to customers are looking for speed, but there is a speed cost, like, scale that we’re already already that we are very conscious of and working out kind of where is the tolerance of the consumer and how do we build profitable businesses going forward. And each of these markets give us an amazing window to learn about how to do this and refine it and take those learnings to other markets.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Great. That’s a great segue. I wanna move on to India, which you kind of alluded to, but it it is kind of a different business compared Right? China, you went from brick and mortar to an omnichannel business versus India.

It’s more of a pure play ecommerce, right, with Flipkart being the leading marketplace seller and PhonePe being a leading payment provider. So how is that supply chain build out and the business model different when you approach India where you don’t have as much physical build out? Yeah. So

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: if you step back and look at those two markets, China is a one p on 50% online, offline business. Flipkart is a purely three p, online business only. And, in in in China, we don’t have digital advertising, So that’s one revenue stream that’s not there, and we still got to profitability. In India, we do have digital advertising. That’s a part of their kind of, profitability profile.

And so that, you know, as I talked about before, that market is constantly evolving, and we are constantly evolving our offering to stay in front of the customer’s demand and in front of the customer’s needs. It did start off traditionally in mobiles and kind of then moved into apparel. One of the hidden gems, I think, in the flipkart business is Myntra. And Myntra is its own app and brand that is around beauty and apparel and, yeah, and accessories. But they have so much capability built into that offering around customizing and being hyper personalized.

And they are probably one of the, leaders across international in using generative AI to really get delight the customer. And I had the opportunity to interview, the CEO of Minthra last year, and I was talking to her about how they how they how this actually manifests for the customer. And she was sharing with me that the customer can go on to Minthra and actually just put in a query like, okay. I’m going to a wedding in Kerala, and, the, you know, the average age of people will be about 20, and it’s during summer. And I think that there is going to be, like I don’t know.

It will be an overly formal wedding. And it will give the person, like, four different kind of looks, of outfits that they can create. And then they can ask it to also provide all the accessories that go with it, and what color palette would I want for makeup. And so Mantra has this hyper personalized but suggested kind of ordering, but all of that is tailored to that one particular person and understanding their transaction history. So they are really beginning to showcase in many ways how to build that hyper personalization into the offering for the customer.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Super interesting. Looking forward to see how that transpires in The US One day. On Flipkart specifically, I think at least the marketplace side is not yet profitable. How do you expect that profitability to evolve in the next couple of years?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yeah. Over time, we are, working on, like, the core business. We’re working on the Mintra business, and we’re working on QuickCommerce. And then looking at how throughout all of that, we continue to grow our digital advertising. It’s on the right trajectory.

We’re excited about their growth. We are not so focused on profitability that we would trade off market share and growth for the future. So you take take the balance of all of that, and we will get there at the right time.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Yep. That makes sense. Moving on to Wamex. And Mexico, specifically, you mentioned is one of the higher growth markets in the international portfolio. Now performance has been a bit more challenging over there.

I think it’s a combination of macro and also competition. Can you talk about what the team is doing on the ground to improve the trend? And what is your assessment of the situation there? How much of the issue has been driven by macro versus what’s within the company’s control?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yeah. The Womx business is super fascinating. So you have China, which is one p, 50 cent offline online. You have Flipkart, which is three p marketplace. And then you have Womx, which is the leading omnichannel retailer in in Mexico.

But if you look at it, what they have tried to do is really address digital inclusion. So one of the things that we found early on was that while we have over 4,000 stores, not everybody could access an omni relationship with us because one of the biggest barriers was that they didn’t actually have the ability they they didn’t have digital connectivity. And so what the team then did was look at, okay. So how do we solve that problem, and how do we use kind of our positioning in the market to be able to solve it in a cost effective way for our customers? And so then that was the emergence of the Byte business, which now has 18,000,000 customers and offers digital connectivity at a 70% discount to, the market.

And the whole purpose of that, besides being its own kind of, profit stream, is that it enables our customers to engage with us digitally and allows us to end up having a far richer, stickier relationship with them into the future because they can buy with us offline and online. And a lot of the what the Womx team have done has looked at how do you continue to build out that whole ecosystem so that we’re inviting people in. Even if you just look at our financial services business in Womx, it is predominantly focused on how do I give people the ability to be able to engage with us in an omni way. Some of, like, large purchases are, difficult for, the lower end consumer to be able to afford, and so we provide them with buy now, pay later. We provide them with the ability to be able to actually have a digital wallet or get access to credit.

And so all of those are about financial inclusion and digital inclusion to enable us to continue to grow the customer base, but also to have really rich relationships with them. Over the last year, we have been really focused on how do we make sure that we set ourselves up to have that one on one personalized relationship with our customer base? And so they launched Beneficius, which is a kind of loyalty program, and we now have 65,000,000 customers that have signed up to that, which enables us to know them on a one to one basis. In a market like Mexico where a number of transactions are cash, that is really, really important. And so the team there have been investing in how do I build out the the, ecosystem or the, omni relationship that we have with our customers to enable us to continue to sustainably grow and be the leading omnichannel retailer in Mexico.

And, yes, over the last kind of year, there has been a softening in Mexico, and there is also some really fierce competition in that in Mexico. And I think, you know, one, we look at competition as a good thing. It makes us sharper. It keeps us kind of dissatisfied, and it means that we’re always hyper focused on who is our customer and are we driving relevancy with them. And, you know, I think also, in the softening in the economic, in in the economy, there are households that are struggling.

And I do think that’s where the bodega, as a format is really relevant. And we’ve just we’ve started to see some real traction with bodega, with customers from a foot traffic and from a basket perspective. So we are well positioned in that country, and I think there will be times where, you know, the economy will be expanding, and there’ll be times when it’s contracting. And and I think, Walmart is positioned to be able to grow in both of those. I would say on top of that, like, we still see opportunity.

We we look very critically at our businesses. We’ve looked very critically at how we’ve performed over the last twelve months, and we think there’s still upside, and there’s more that we can do.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s great. And similar question for Womx. What can Mexico and Womx learn from the other international markets?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Definitely the QuickCommerce. That is one part that they are learning fast and, you know, visiting the China business, visiting the India business, and looking at what is the local expression of what that looks like in in, Womx. So that’s definitely one thing. Mean, we are also just sharing like, live streaming is such a fascinating concept, that we first learn about in China. India has been a fast follower.

You know? And I think Mexico is interested to see is this something that is relevant that we want to, like, explore in for Womx as well too. It’s just, like, I I feel like I’m overemphasizing this, but, like, there is such a learning window with international because you have the opportunity to be in these different markets where and they are they do, like, evolve at a different pace. And the fierceness of competition in some of those markets means that we will kind of it feels like sometimes, like, you see the future of what’s happening in retail, and then you can bring that back to another market.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: That’s so interesting. I’ve personally tried live streaming. It is still pretty foreign concept here, but we’ll see how that goes. Now in the the last couple of minutes, Cath, I wanna go back to supply chain. Right?

We talked a lot about the international portfolio and how that ties into Walmart’s global sourcing. Going back to your original role in supply chain a number of years ago, I mean, how quickly can production be moved from one country to another, I guess, both in the past, and and how has that evolved, recently in this context?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yeah. I think looking at moving production is probably a question for suppliers as opposed to retailers. I would say we have been very thoughtful across categories and, you know you know, we have been focused on looking at this surety of supply to make sure that we don’t have over focus in one market versus another. And we have also noticed like, we we look at manufacturing trends across the world. One of the things that we saw a couple years back was that there was a real acceleration in the capability around food manufacturing and automated food manufacturing in Europe, which was giving really, really high quality results.

And we started partnering with a number of companies who were interested in building their own manufacturing here in The US. And so our role in that is more to tee up the opportunity to ensure that they understand, like, what would be our kind of growth aspirations and to encourage them to be able to build manufacturing here because that enables us a much shorter lead time and, you know, access to, like, great quality quickly. And so, I think we’re always looking across the world at where can we source products from, where there is a quality differential and a cost differential, and how do we build out resiliency in that supply chain so that we don’t have, you know, a risk around disruption from supply.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Yeah. And I realized my next question may be also for suppliers, but curious to get your perspectives on the concept of onshoring. Right? How feasible is it to onshore production, especially in the discretionary categories, apparel, home, toys, electronics to The US? Is there even enough capacity in this country, and and what’s gonna change in the next couple of years?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: Yeah. I I would say, like, that’s probably a question for someone else other than me. I think we’re constantly looking at how do we make sure that from a Walmart perspective, we have that resiliency and the surety of supply. You know, I something else I was gonna say about that. But in terms

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: of capacity in The US and and potential to move production Yeah. In this country?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: I can’t remember what my thought was, but, you know, I think the long and the short of it is we have been constantly we’re constantly looking to make sure that we have that surety of supply for our customers into the future.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: No. Absolutely. And from a international perspective, how does your international presence help your global sourcing? And you kind of alluded to this upfront, but if you can give us a couple more examples in terms of, in this context, your presence globally, how how has that helped you?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: One of the things that we really enjoy being able to do is hold growth summits in each of the countries that we’re in. There’s a very natural progression for, you know, what can start off as a small artisan seller to join us as a seller on our local marketplace. So we’re in Chile, and I got to meet with some local, very small businesses who were starting off as sellers on our marketplace in Chile. And then what that gives them the opportunity to start to build out their capability to then become a seller on our marketplace globally. And it also as they build out their manufacturing runs and, build out their man their capabilities, we can then onboard them as a, sourcing partner to our bricks and mortar, both within that country.

And then also if it’s a really good item, across other markets as well too. So we see each of these markets as like a pipeline to be able to find, you know, new, and exciting and innovative items that enable us to be able to feed them into kind of our sourcing and, seller, profile. So, you know, those growth summits have been a great way to discover new upcoming organizations and give them the kind of training wheels, to become a sourcing partner of the future.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Interesting. And and a philosophical question for you, Cass. As I think the largest or one of the largest retailers in the world for Walmart, what are the pros and cons of having that size while trying to be nimble and moving global sourcing and supply chains around?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: I think one of the benefits of the size is that there is always a solution somewhere within Walmart. You know, I sometimes think size comes down to your, like, your frame of mind. When I I used to work for a retailer in Australia, and we it was Woolworths. We were one of the largest retailers in Australia, and we used to bemoan. We’re so big.

It’s so hard to get things done because we’re so big. We’re about $60,000,000,000 business. And then I came to Walmart, and, you know, Walmart is, like, significantly bigger. And I and then I ended up in Sam’s, and Sam’s is about a $60,000,000,000 business. And we used to say, we’re so small.

It’s so easy to be nimble and agile because we’re so small. And I was like, that’s so interesting to me. Two $60,000,000,000 businesses, and one’s bemoaning the fact that it’s too big, and the other one’s, like, celebrating the fact that it’s small and nimble. And so you really learn the the lesson that, actually, it’s your frame of mind that enables you to be able to get things done. And so I’d worry little about, you know, scale and think more about opportunity.

And I do think we have this great opportunity in each of the markets to be to use our scale wisely, to be able to get the best cost advantages that we possibly can, but also to be thoughtful around how we can be nimble in that market and continue to iterate and make sure that we are leading in front of where the customer really wants us to evolve, whether it’s quick commerce, whether it’s finding great items, whether it’s having the best value proposition that we possibly can.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Great. Thank you so much, Kath. I know you’re gonna be meeting with a lot of investors throughout today. Any closing thoughts you wanna share with the group?

Cath MacLeigh, President and CEO, Walmart International: I would say I’ve been eighteen months in international. It is an ex such an exciting part of the Walmart division. I used to see it, like, as complex and exotic, and now I see it as vibrant. And there is so much richness in the international portfolio, and it is such a growth engine for the organization. So I hope, like, I hope just our conversation today has intrigued you a little bit about the upside of international.

We have been accretive to both top and bottom line for for Walmart, and we intend to remain in that position. And so I hope it’s in some way, piqued your interest a little.

Jiha Ma, Senior Analyst, Bernstein: Great. Thank you so much, Kath. I look forward to a productive day of conversations, that’s to come. Thank you very much everyone for joining us. Thank you.

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