Stock price when the opinion was issued
By and large, commercial real estate landlords do consider this name to be in the grocery space. It's doing a better and better job of that. But not a pure-play grocery. He thinks of defensive, grocery-anchored shopping centres as neighbourhood, urban, smaller centres -- where you can get a haircut and do other errands that can't be done online.
Probably don't want to buy it today. Concerned with valuation of 34x forward PE for 7% growth. Makes for a high PEG ratio at 5. Trading at 200-day MA, so could be some support there for a trade. Low beta, will do well in an economic downturn as grocery is such a big part of its business. E-commerce is improving. Intense competition.
Tariffs aren't in place at this point. Tariff talks are coming up this weekend, and things can change on a dime. A year from now, he doesn't see tariffs in place at the levels first announced. Worries on that front are premature.
Technically, the stock is great -- higher highs, higher lows. Valuation's up there at 38x forward PE, for 7-7.5% earnings growth. Expensive at over 5x PEG.
It would be terrific if Walmart operated as a charity by subsidizing its customers. Problem is retailers have incredibly low profit margins to begin with. Also, they couldn't plan ahead, but nobody knew these tariffs were coming. When they did know, they did their best shifting to sourcing products from countries that had the lowest tariffs. But you can't change your entire supply chain overnight. Given their huge scale, WMT negotiate the best deal with their suppliers, and have tried not to raise prices that much for customers. They will certainly lose money on some products. Walmart should be the last company on Earth to be singled out for profiteering.
It would be terrific if Walmart operated as a charity by subsidizing its customers. Problem is retailers have incredibly low profit margins to begin with. Also, they couldn't plan ahead, but nobody knew these tariffs were coming. When they did know, they did their best shifting to sourcing products from countries that had the lowest tariffs. But you can't change your entire supply chain overnight. Given their huge scale, WMT negotiate the best deal with their suppliers, and have tried not to raise prices that much for customers. They will certainly lose money on some products. Walmart should be the last company on Earth to be singled out for profiteering.
They will survive this tariff war, because their sourcing of products is so great.