Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) Targets Increased Sales Of Up To $60 Billion By 2019

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Thursday it expects to add $45 billion to $60 billion of new sales over the next three years.

Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon told delegates at the Consumer Goods Forum conference in the South African port city of Cape Town: “So sometimes people say Walmart is not really a growth company any more. I want to say: ‘Well, if we layer on $50 to $60 billion, would that count, in three years?”

The company presentation projected the sales increase mentioned by McMillon, Reuters reported.

He also discussed the retailer's increased opportunities in China despite the tough competition it faces from local firms.

“China is a tremendous opportunity and I am very excited about China, bullish on China, but it’s extraordinarily competitive, very creative competitors involved, so it’s going to be tough,” he said at the conference.

In October last year, the company applied to U.S. regulators for permission to test drones for home delivery, curbside pickup and checking warehouse inventories in a bid to use drones to fill and deliver online orders.

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart announced it was six to nine months from beginning to use drones to check the inventories in the U.S., taking a step closer to using the technology to compete better with rivals.

“We are still in early phases of testing and understanding how drones can be better used in different types of business functions,” Shekar Natarajan, vice president of Last Mile and Emerging Sciences at Wal-Mart, reportedly said.

Earlier this month, e-commerce retailer Alibaba Group announced that it had “become the largest retail economy in the world” at the end of its fiscal year on March 31, “as measured by gross merchandise volume on its China retail marketplaces.”

This was an indication that it had overtaken the $482.1 billion revenue reported by Wal-Mart for its fiscal year ended Jan. 31.