Wal-Mart (WMT) Sees Strong Start To Holiday Season

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT) has kicked off the holiday season pretty well with huge footfalls on the Thanksgiving Day as well as Black Friday. The company has issued a statement underlining that its performance was according to its plans for shopping in the holiday season.

For the holiday season, Wal-Mart had offered lucrative deals and abundant availability of those items to the customers. The customers started flocking to the stores of the retailer from the beginning of the week for Thanksgiving shopping. The retailer sold 150 million pounds of turkey and ham for the holiday season. The demand for ham and pies remained high throughout the month, quite evident from its selling of more than six pies per second. Notably, Pumpkin and Patti Labelle Sweet Potato Pie were the most popular items for the month.

Shopping for Black Friday started from midnight on Thanksgiving Day, with shoppers logging on to the official website of Walmart.comand the Walmart app. Wal-Mart had announced that the Black Friday shopping will kick off at 6PM local time on Thanksgiving Day.

Among the lucrative offers, it announced wristbands, smartphones and iTabs at attractive prices. Further, the company offered a large assortment of toys like Hatchimals and PlayStations at attractive deals. More than 70% of traffic on Thanksgiving Day was driven by shopping on mobile.

The categories that recorded top most sales during the day were televisions, cookware, video games and systems, drones, toys and pajamas for the whole family.

The holiday season is the period when retailers are well on their toes, flooding the markets with offers and promotions. Retailers like hhgregg (NYSE:HGG) , Best Buy Inc. (NYSE:BBY) , Macy’s Inc. (NYSE:M) intend to lure customers with early-hour store openings, huge discounts, promotional strategies along with free shipping on online purchases.

Since the season accounts for a sizeable chunk of yearly revenues and profits, retailers grab every opportunity to drive footfall. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has started its Black Friday Early Countdown Deals Week, which features lightning deals for its prime members.

Zacks Rank

Wal-Mart currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

(You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.)

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