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The Walton family fortune fell US$11,4 billion on Tuesday after Walmart slashed its earnings outlook for the second time this year.
Shares of the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, which is controlled by the family, tumbled 7,6 percent in New York trading after it said adjusted earnings per share will decline as much as 13 percent this year with US shoppers reining in spending on big-ticket items amid soaring consumer prices.
Two months ago, the company said earnings per share would only dip about 1 percent, while in February, it had predicted a modest increase.
The family’s late patriarch, Sam Walton, built the business around a discount culture that has in the past helped buoy its stock during recessionary times. In revising its outlook, Walmart cited the cost of reducing merchandise stockpiles that customers were increasingly reluctant to buy as inflation hits a four-decade high.
Walton’s three surviving children, Alice, Jim and Rob, daughter-in-law Christy and Christy’s son, Lukas, own just under half of the retailer.
That gives them a combined net worth of about $199.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, down almost 11% since the first of the year.
Walmart wasn’t the only retailer to see its shares tumble.
Canadian e-commerce firm Shopify fell 14 percent on Tuesday after chief executive officer Tobi Lutke acknowledged the company’s decision to expand rapidly coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t pay off.
As a result, the firm said it planned to cut about 10 percent of its workforce.
Tuesday’s decline shaved US$383 million from Lutke’s net worth, dropping the 41-year-old co-founder’s fortune to about US$3,1 billion, according to the Bloomberg index.
Ottawa-based Shopify’s shares have plunged 77 percent this year. – Bloomberg
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