Is Walmart The Biggest Company In The World? (Unravel The Truth)

This comprehensive piece examines whether Walmart rightfully claims the crown as the world's largest corporation, juxtaposing its scale, impact, and market capitalization with other global powerhouses

Walmart serves various continents as grocery stores, discount department stores, and supermarkets. It offers its consumers a wide range of products and has over 2.2 million employees around the globe. Since its humble beginnings as a dime store, Walmart has frequently been named the biggest e-commerce site in the world. With over 11 500 stores globally, Walmart is increasing its international corporation.

Table Of Contents

Is Walmart The Biggest Company In The World?

Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation that runs several supermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. The company also owns and operates several warehouses.

Walmart has about 11,000 stores and clubs in 28 countries where it operates under different names. Amazon works on most continents. For instance, it has branches in the United States, India, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, and Central America.

It earns the most significant revenue in the world, with over 570 US dollars annually, according to the Fortune 500 listings in 2022. The retail store is also the largest employer in the world, with over 2.2 million employees. In 2022, Walmart will be the largest grocery retailer in the United States.

The Walton family controls the company, which is a family-owned business. The heir of Sam Walton holds over 50 percent of the Walmart shares through their holding company, Walton Enterprises, and their individual holdings.

How Does Amazon Compare to Walmart?

Both Walmart and Amazon.com are giant retail stores that operate intending to satisfy customer needs by providing the lowest price possible. The companies face constant competition where they consistently attempt to get ahead of each other.

Amazon.com and Walmart try to gain and maintain customer loyalty by increasing their accessibility and offering a wide range of products. Most of their product categories are much alike, with only slight differentiation. Their product faces constant price competition and uses special offers to entice their customers.

Despite the stiff competition between the two retail stores, they still have some differences. Walmart began its operation as a physical store and later developed into an online store. Amazon is an online giant retailer with giant outlets worldwide.

Amazon also provides a broader range of products to its consumers compared to Walmart. Walmart only offers over 4 million products in-store, ranging from a broad spectrum of product categories. Amazon avails of over 250 million products to their online customers and includes over 50 000 products in their stock.

Unlike Walmart, Amazon adds membership fees to their purchases. Amazon customers can subscribe to premium membership, where they are provided with shopping benefits. An Amazon Prime member pays about 12 dollars monthly, depending on the subscription. Also, only Amazon Prime members receive free shipping, while all Walmart members have access to free shipping.

How Much Taxes Does Walmart Pay?

In a year, Walmart pays 7.5 billion dollars in taxes. This is minimal compared to their yearly earnings, which are 528 billion dollars. It means that Walmart pays 1.6 percent of its annual earnings. An ordinary American pays about 16 percent of his earnings on taxes.

Even though Walmart makes 528 billion dollars in a year, much of its earnings are paid to employees who are over 2.2 million. They also spend on transportation and buying operational equipment while selling products. This means that Walmart makes a profit of 14.7 billion yearly. The 7.5 billion dollars in taxes are charged on the profits, which is about half of what they earn.

How Much Do Amazon Customers Spend?

Walmart’s customers globally use a whopping 482 billion dollars every year. However, the spending trend in the United States is slightly different. With 11 527 stores worldwide, 5,229 are in the United States.

It means that most of Walmart’s revenue is from the United States. Per 2015 statistics, Walmart made 288 billion dollars in sales in America. The consumer spending was $12.4 Billion. That means 4% of the United States spend their earnings buying in Walmart. Each day, Walmart customers spend an average of 2 million dollars.

What Does Walmart Offer To Its Shareholders?

Despite the negative articles published giving information about Walmart, it is a good stock with a lot to offer investors. Walmart is also a cheap stock, trading at 71.40 dollars per share.

Walmart offers its investors a dividend of 2,72 percent and a return on equity of 20.77 percent. Walmart's investors also have an impressive diluted EPS of 4.971, including a profit margin of 2.91 percent. It means that Walmart investors pay less for the stock and earn more from it. This makes Walmart a classic and valuable investment.

Which Is Bigger, Walmart or Amazon?

From statistics, Amazon.com is not bigger than Walmart. The company's financial numbers show that Walmart is far more extensive and more prosperous than Amazon. Some claims that Amazon is greater than Walmart because of the specific figure market capitalization, which is the total estimated value of Amazon’s stock and not its actual businesses.

In 2015 Amazon had a market capitalization of 247.95 billion dollars, in contrast to Walmart's market value of 229.69 billion dollars. The market cap is only on stock share price, which is the only part that Amazon.com is ahead of Walmart.

When calculating a company's general value, the enterprise value is considered, and estimation is done on the company’s businesses. In terms of value, Walmart is ahead of Amazon. Walmart's revenue is far ahead of Amazon's value. Recently, Amazon presented a revenue of 95.81 billion dollars, while Walmart had a revenue of 485.52 billion.

Recap

With Walmart's extraordinary growth within the retail industry, the biggest question is not if there will be a Walmart store near you but how many stores there will be. While staying true to its humble roots, Walmart has grown into one of the largest companies in the world. Each day Walmart sells about $8 billion worth of products, making an average profit of $500 million daily.