By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Walmart (NYSE:WMT) shares were trading more than 3% higher in Tuesday’s premarket as the company, encouraged by growth in March quarter earnings, raised its guidance for the year.
Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon said the company expects the company to profit from pent-up demand through 2021. He said optimism is now higher than it was at the beginning of the year, an outcome of increasing vaccinations and the stimulus that has kept people spending.
The management’s commentary was upbeat following growth in all the business segments the company operates. To make it even better, it gained market share in the super-competitive groceries segment.
The company now expects its annual EPS to increase in high single digits as opposed to a slight decline it forecast earlier. It hopes to increase its consolidated operating income in mid single-digit in constant currency terms. This was expected to decline slightly as per its previous estimates.
The outlook is built on a conservative basis that there will be no significant additional government stimulus packages for the remainder of the year.
Total revenue in the March quarter was $138.3 billion, a 2.7% increase from the same quarter last year. Operating income was up by as much as 32% to $6.9 billion.