Wal-Mart de Mexico Net Profit Up 11% in Fourth Quarter
February 13 2019 - 5:50PM
Dow Jones News
By Anthony Harrup
MEXICO CITY -- Net profit at retailer Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB
rose 11% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as lower costs
and expenses compensated for a slowdown in sales growth.
The unit of Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart Inc., known as
Walmex, made net profit of 11.8 billion Mexican pesos ($607
million) in the October-December period, compared with 10.6 billion
pesos in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Sales rose 5.5% to 177.4 billion pesos, a slowdown in growth
from the previous three quarters, while cost of sales and general
expenses in the fourth quarter rose 5.2% and 3.8%, respectively,
contributing to higher profit margins.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization,
a measure of operating cash flow, grew 12% to 19 billion pesos.
Walmex, Mexico's biggest retailer by sales, ended last year with
2,438 stores in Mexico and 811 in Central America.
Sales for all of 2018 rose 7.6% to 616.9 billion pesos ($31.7
billion).
The 134 new stores the company opened last year contributed 2.3
percentage points of growth in sales, Walmex chief executive
Guilherme Loureiro said in a webcast presentation, adding that the
store expansion was the biggest in five years.
Online sales grew 40% last year from 2017 and accounted for 1.4%
of total sales in Mexico.
Walmex said it's proposing dividends of 1.75 pesos per share in
2019, up from 1.65 pesos per share in 2018. The company's shares
closed down 0.1% on the Mexican stock exchange ahead of the
report.
Write to Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 13, 2019 17:35 ET (22:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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