2020 Investment Community Meeting Transcript
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Corrected Transcript 18-Feb-2020 Walmart, Inc. (WMT) Investment Community Meeting Total Pages: 80 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2020 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Walmart, Inc. (WMT) Corrected Transcript Investment Community Meeting 18-Feb-2020 CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS Daniel Binder Suresh Kumar Vice President-Investor Relations, Walmart, Inc. Chief Technology & Development Officer, Walmart, Inc. C. Douglas McMillon Dacona Smith President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Walmart, Inc. Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer - Walmart U.S., Walmart, Inc. Brett M. Biggs Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President, Walmart, Inc. Jamie Iannone Chief Executive Officer, SamsClub.com and Executive Vice President of John Furner Membership and Technology, Walmart, Inc. President & Chief Executive Officer-Walmart U.S., Walmart, Inc. Karthik Raghupathy Marc Lore Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, PhonePe President & Chief Executive Officer-Walmart U.S. eCommerce, Walmart, Inc. Kathleen McLaughlin Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Walmart, Inc. Judith McKenna President & Chief Executive Officer-Walmart International, Walmart, Rachel Brand Inc. Executive Vice President-Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, Walmart, Inc. Kath McLay President and Chief Executive Officer, Sam's Club, Walmart, Inc. ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... OTHER PARTICIPANTS Karen Short Christopher Horvers Analyst, Barclays Capital, Inc. Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC Simeon Ari Gutman Analyst, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC Robert Drbul Analyst, Guggenheim Securities LLC Peter Sloan Benedict Analyst, Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. Kate McShane Analyst, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Gregory Scott Melich Analyst, Evercore ISI Michael Baker Analyst, Nomura/Instinet Michael Lasser Analyst, UBS Securities LLC Scott Mushkin Analyst, R5 Capital Charles Grom Analyst, Gordon Haskett Research Advisors 2 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2020 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Walmart, Inc. (WMT) Corrected Transcript Investment Community Meeting 18-Feb-2020 Kelly Bania Analyst, AllianceBernstein Analyst, BMO Capital Markets Corp. Christopher Mandeville Scot Ciccarelli Analyst, Jefferies LLC Analyst, RBC Capital Markets LLC Oliver Chen Craig Johnson Analyst, Cowen & Co. LLC President, Customer Growth Partners LLC Robert F. Ohmes Paul Trussell Analyst, BofA Securities, Inc. Analyst, Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Rupesh Parikh Edward Yruma Analyst, Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. Analyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc. Edward J. Kelly Caroline Conway Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities LLC ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION SECTION Daniel Binder Vice President-Investor Relations, Walmart, Inc. Good morning, and welcome to Walmart's 2020 Investment Community Meeting. Thank you, all, for being here and thanks to those joining us on the webcast. We appreciate your interest in Walmart. I know the executive team looks forward to sharing their strategies with you and answering your questions. Now, let me get a few of our usual statements out of the way. The information presented at today's meeting should be viewed in conjunction with our press release and earnings materials that can be found on our website, stock.walmart.com. The presentations will also be posted on our website as they are completed. Today's presentations include forward-looking statements that are subject to future events and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Please reference our entire Safe Harbor statement and non-GAAP reconciliations on our website, stock.walmart.com. Hopefully, you've had a chance to review our earnings materials issued this morning, which we'll discuss in more detail during today's presentations. You can see today's agenda on the screens besides me. We'll kick things off in a minute with Doug McMillon, Walmart's President and CEO. Then, you'll hear from our CFO, Brett Biggs, and at that point, we'll have a 30-minute Q&A session to discuss Q4 results and guidance. Following that, we will have a brief break and then continue with the rest of our program. After the segment presentations, we'll be doing something new this year. We will have an innovation panel discussion to highlight some of the many innovations across the business. We'll then wrap up with an hour Q&A session, and at the end of that session, our formal meeting will conclude. We invite you to join us upstairs for lunch where you will have an opportunity to spend time with our executive team. With that, let's get things started. Doug? ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... C. Douglas McMillon President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Walmart, Inc. 3 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2020 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Walmart, Inc. (WMT) Corrected Transcript Investment Community Meeting 18-Feb-2020 Good morning. Thanks for coming. You're going to hear about our future plans from several of our leaders today. Let's begin by talking about Q4. I'll give you a summary and then Brett will come up and share more detail about the quarter, the year and our guidance going forward. We feel pretty good about the year, even though the fourth quarter was not our best. Our momentum in food and consumables within Walmart U.S. has continued. That's been our priority, and it's good to have that strength to build on. Our volume in stores as well as through pickup and delivery remains strong. And it was good to see our US e-commerce growth of 35% for the quarter and 37% for the year. Our sales missed a plane in the US was in our stores and related to a few general merchandise categories. Sales in November and January were what we expected, but the weeks just before Christmas fell short. We performed well in electronics, Christmas seasonal, the home categories and health and wellness, but were short of plan in toys, media and gaming and apparel. The sales miss to plan and less favorable mix of sales impacted operating income and a change to our attendance policy contributed to wages being higher than they would have otherwise been. So a few things came together that affected our results. We know what happened and we're already taking steps to address them. You'll hear more details from John and Marc in a bit, but those steps include adjusting our apparel assortment and presentation in stores. We were too opening price point dominant this year and we had too much of an investment in Christmas, Christmas seasonal apparel. Also, we'll adjust some of the toy decisions we've made which John will say more about, and we'll change our approach to Layaway which missed sales plan by quite a bit this year. In addition to adjustments to our plan for stores, it's obviously important to accelerate progress in eCommerce given the ongoing channel shift. We'll continue to build our eCommerce assortment by adding items and brands in key general merchandize categories, we'll improve our ability to ship eCommerce orders during peak and make sure that customers know we can do it. We exited the quarter in good shape in terms of the amount and content of our inventory. January sales were on plan and February sales have started off well too. Sam's Club's fourth quarter sales were a little better than plan, with membership and eCommerce performing well. Walmex India and China were highlights in Q4. Walmex is a real gem and we are really proud of that team. With respect to India, we remain excited about the opportunity we have there. The way Flipkart and PhonePe are scaling is impressive. In China, we drove improved momentum in the back half of the year as Sam's Club and eCommerce experienced strong results. We're managing the issues related to the coronavirus daily. Our primary focus is, of course, on our associates and our customers. Judith and Brett will share more about our thoughts and actions a little bit later. Now, Brett will give you the detail on the quarter, the year and our guidance for this year, then I'll come back up and tell you more about our plan going forward. Brett? ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Brett M. Biggs Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President, Walmart, Inc. Thanks, Doug. Good morning. Great to be with you here in New York City and thanks for everybody joining us on the webcast. So, as always, there are a lot of exciting things going on at Walmart. This is my 20th year with the company and I've seen it evolve and I've seen it adapt and I've seen it grow in remarkable ways. 4 1-877-FACTSET www.callstreet.com Copyright © 2001-2020 FactSet CallStreet, LLC Walmart, Inc. (WMT)