Walmart Drops 10%

Shares of Walmart (WMT) are having their worst day in 15 years. The stock is currently down 10% today. That’s a market cap loss of about $20 billion.

Walmart has 3.21 billion shares outstanding but the float is only 1.37 billion shares. The heirs of Sam Walton still own a gigantic amount of the company. According to Bloomberg, the family has lost $9 billion today, and $39 billion this year.

The billionaire Waltons — Christy, Jim, Alice and Rob — have a combined $122 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with the bulk of their wealth in the shares they inherited from Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. The four shareholders, three children of Sam and Christy, the surviving spouse of a fourth sibling, are among the year’s worst-performing billionaires, losing a total of $39 billion since Jan. 1.

It’s not just today; the stock has been lagging the market all year. The Walmart heirs started the year with $169 billion. They’re now down to their last $122 billion.

The catalyst for today’s selloff was the company warning that its earnings for the next fiscal year (ending January 2017) may fall as much as 12%. Wall Street had been expecting a small gain. Obviously, Walmart is a gigantic enterprise. On average, Walmart brings in $15,000 of revenue every second.

Posted by on October 14th, 2015 at 2:48 pm


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