Walmart is widely recognized as an affordable and dependable department store chain, with thousands of locations nationwide. As Best Life writes, this doesn’t mean that it’s “immune to economic realities and maintaining its bottom line,” which sometimes means cutting back on the number of stores it operates.
The company recently announced that it will be closing even more locations as of March 24th, including two stores in Portland, Oregon. Here’s what we know:
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WALMART Is CLOSING IT’S LAST 2 STORES in Portland, Oregon’s the largest city, on March 24. The latest in a series of shutdowns.
Walmart CEO said in 2022 that retail theft has hit the company’s economic performance and could lead to store closures @RealSauceTalk pic.twitter.com/7eJB9o9o8b
— Mr. Sauce Talk (@RealSauceTalk) March 7, 2023
Walmart’s Portland, Oregon Store Closures
The two stores— located at Hayden Meadows and East Port Plaza— are expected to shutter to the public by March 24th, as a spokesperson for the company confirmed to Best Life via email. The pharmacy at each store “will also be closing,” the outlet notes, as with the “staff will be working with customers” to transfer their prescriptions to another location.
Walmart has yet to indicate a reason for these closures, and it has only revealed that it made the decision after an in-depth review process. A Walmart source, Best Life adds, said the retailer’s underlying business “remains strong, but that it uses several determining factors when pinpointing underperforming locations,” including historic and current viability.
Fox 12 Oregon spoke with #Portland Walmart shoppers devastated that its stores will shut down. They must now go to more expensive grocery stores or drive further. Shoppers speculate that mass theft was behind Walmart’s decision to close in Portland. https://t.co/xHyRKkhaOy pic.twitter.com/7kx8uS0wPe
— Andy Ng (@MrAndyNgo) March 4, 2023
Lauren Willis, global communications director for Walmart in the Western U.S., said in a statement, “We are grateful to the customers who have given us the privilege of serving them at our Hayden Meadows and Eastport Plaza locations. We look forward to serving them at our other stores in the surrounding communities and on Walmart.com.”
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Walmart announced it is permanently closing all of its locations in Portland, Oregon, over financial reasons https://t.co/dES7R56Tzy
— Neil Saunders (@NeilRetail) March 6, 2023
Other Walmart Store Closings
As Footwear News reports, Walmart also recently announced that it would close locations in New Mexico, Illinois, Wisconsin and Florida that didn’t meet its financial expectations. “While our underlying business is strong, these specific stores haven’t performed as well as we hoped,” the company stated.
They added, “There is no single cause for why a store closes — our decision is based on several factors, including historic and current financial performance, and is in line with the threshold that guides our strategy to close underperforming locations.”
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Takeaways From Walmart's Latest Earnings Call
The aforementioned Walmart store closings happened after the company's latest earnings call, which outlined its plans for the year.
John David Rainey, chief financial officer and executive vice president for Walmart expressed that the company just had a strong holiday season with an 8.3 percent increase in sales at US stores. However, the retailer isn't fully confident that these successes will last much longer.
"There's just a lot that we don't know," John R. Furner, president and chief executive officer for Walmart U.S., said on the call. "We could tilt into a recession. We don't know what happens to consumer spending. We don't know what happens to layoffs, household income. And so given that we're so early into the year and there's a lot of unknowns right now, we're simply taking a cautious outlook."
Rainey added, "We find ourselves in a similar position to each of the last three years, where there is a great deal of uncertainty looking out over the balance of the year." He continued, "While the supply chain issues have largely abated, prices are still high and there is considerable pressure on the consumer."
