Wal-Mart de Mexico Net Profit Up 11% in Fourth Quarter

   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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 13, 2019 17:35 ET (22:35 GMT)

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