Who Owns Walmart?

Business / By Gennaro Cuofano / March 5, 2023 March 6, 2023

As of 2022, 2,751,779,629 Shares were outstanding for Walmart. The company’s major shareholder is the Walton family, whose mission is to “help people around the world save money and live better – anytime and anywhere – in retail stores and through eCommerce.” While its vision is to “make every day easier for busy families.” Walmart defines “busy families” as the bull’s eye of its business strategy. From humble beginnings just over 50 years ago, Walmart’s business model has become the world’s largest retail company.

More about Walmart’s business model

Walmart Business Model

walmart-business-model — With over $572 billion in net sales in 2022, Walmart operates a differentiated Omni business model with three primary units comprising Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam’s Club (a membership-only warehouse club), together with Walmart+. This subscription service includes unlimited free shipping, unlimited delivery from its stores, and discounts launched in 2021.

Walmart Revenue vs. Profit

walmart-revenue-vs-profit — Walmart generated over $572 billion in revenue in 2022 and over $13.6 billion in net profits in the same year. Compared to over $559 billion in revenue in 2021 and over $13.5 billion in net profits.

Walmart Revenue

walmart-revenue — Walmart generated over $572 billion in revenues in 2022, compared to over $559 billion in 2021.

Walmart Customers

walmart-customers — Walmart had 230 million global customers in 2022, compared to 240 million customers in 2021 and 265 million customers in 2019.

Walmart Stores

walmart-stores — In 2022, Walmart had 10,500 employees globally, compared to 11,400 employees globally, in 2021.

Walmart Employees

walmart-employees — Walmart had 2.3 million associates globally in 2022, the same number in 2021. While in 2020, Walmart had 2.2 million associates globally.

Walmart Mission Statement

walmart-vision-statement-mission-statement — Walmart’smission can be summarized as “helping people around the world save money and live better – anytime and anywhere – in retail stores and through eCommerce.” While its vision is to “make every day easier for busy families.” Walmart defines “busy families” as the bull’s eye of its business strategy.

Walmart Organizational Structure

walmart-organizational-structure — Walmart has a hybrid hierarchical-functional organizational structure, otherwise referred to as a matrix structure that combines multiple approaches. On the one hand, Walmart follows a hierarchical structure, where the current CEO Doug McMillon is the only employee without a direct superior, and directives are sent from top-level management. On the other hand, the function-based structure of Walmart is used to categorize employees according to their particular skills and experience.

Walmart SWOT Analysis

walmart-swot-analysis — From humble beginnings just over 50 years ago, Walmart has become the world’s largest retail company. A single small discount store in Arkansas has now expanded to over 11,000 stores in 28 countries. Some reports suggest that the company makes $1.8 million of profit every hour.

Read Also: Walmart Business Model, Walmart SWOT Analysis, Walmart Mission Statement, Costco Business Model.

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Connected Business Models

Amazon Business Model

amazon-business-model — Amazon has a diversified business model. In 2021 Amazon posted over $469 billion in revenues and over $33 billion in net profits. Online stores contributed to over 47% of Amazon revenues, Third-party Seller Services, Amazon AWS, Subscription Services, Advertising revenues and Physical Stores.

Costco Business Model

costco-business-model — With a substantial part of its business focused on selling merchandise at the low profit-margin, Costco also has about fifty million members that each year guarantee to the company over $2.8 billion in steady income at high-profit margins. Costco uses a single-step distribution strategy to sell its inventory.

Aldi Business Model

aldi-business-model — By the end of World War II, Theo and Karl Albrecht took over the small grocery store of their mother to make it become one of the most successful discount supermarket chains in the world. ALDI operates according to the motto “the best quality at the lowest price.” ALDI North and South have separate operations with combined sales of 53 billion euros in 2010. ALDI founders are among the wealthiest businessmen in Germany, with a personal wealth of over 33 billion euros combined.

Wholesale Business Model

wholesale-business-model — The wholesale model is where wholesalers sell their products in bulk to a retailer at a discounted price. The retailer then on-sells the products to consumers at a higher price. In the wholesale model, a wholesaler sells products in bulk to retail outlets for onward sale. Occasionally, the wholesaler sells direct to the consumer, with supermarket giant Costco the most obvious example.

Retail Business Model

retail-business-model — A retail business model follows a direct-to-consumer approach, also called B2C, where the company sells a processed/finished product directly to final customers. This implies a business model that is mostly local-based. It carries higher margins but also higher costs and distribution risks.

E-Commerce Business Models

e-commerce-business-models — We can classify e-commerce businesses in several ways. General classifications look at three primary categories: – B2B or business-to-business, where, therefore, a business sells to another company. – B2C or business-to-consumer, where a business sells to a final consumer. – C2C, consumer-to-consume, or more peer-to-peer where consumers sell to each other.

Related Ownership Case Studies

Who Owns Google

The most prominent institutional shareholders are mutual funds BlackRock and The Vanguard Group, with 2.7% and 3.1%, respectively. Larry Page and Sergey Brin together have 51% of the voting power. Other individual shareholders comprise John Doerr (1.5%), venture capitalist and early investor in Google, and CEO, Sundar Pichai. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has 4.2% voting power.

Who Owns Facebook

who-owns-facebook — Mark Zuckerberg is the largest shareholder of the company. Zuckerberg retains ownership and control of the company. Like Google, Facebook has issued two common stocks, Class A and Class B. The holders of Class B common stocks are entitled to ten votes per share, and holders of our Class A common stocks are entitled to one vote per share. Mark Zuckerberg has a voting power of 56.9%; he’s the main decision-maker.

Who Owns Apple

who-owns-apple — As of 2021, major Apple shareholders comprised Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway with 5.56% of the company’s stock. Followed by other individual shareholders like Tim Cook, CEO of Apple with over 3.3 million shares, Artur Levinson, chairman of Apple, with over 4.5 million shares, and others.

Who Owns Amazon

who-owns-amazon — With 64,588,418 shares, Jeff Bezos is the major individual investor. Owning 12.7% of the company. Other top individual investors comprise Amazon’s CEO Andy Jessy, with 94,729 shares. Top institutional investors comprise mutual funds like The Vanguard Group (6.6% ownership) and BlackRock (5.7% ownership).

Who Owns Microsoft

who-owns-microsoft — Major shareholders comprise co-founder Bill Gates, who stepped down from the company’s board in 2020, which is why these shares are no longer publicly reported. In 2019, Gates still owned a stake of 103 million stocks, which accounted for 1.34% of the company’s ownership (worth over $23 billion in September 2022). Other individual shareholders comprise Satya Nadella, the company’s CEO, Brad Smith (former president), Jean-Philippe Courtois (EVP), and Amy Hood (former CFO).

Who Owns Tesla

who-owns-tesla — By 2022, most of Tesla’s shares are still owned by Elon Musk, among the company’s co-founders and the CEO. Elon Musk is the top individual investor, with a 23.5% stake in the company, equivalent to over 244 million shares. Musk is followed by Lawrence Ellison (founder of Oracle), with a 1.5% company stake. Ellison also sits on Tesla’s board. And Antonio Gracias, among the company’s first investors, has over 1.6 million shares. Other institutional investors and mutual funds like The Vanguard Group (6%), Blackrock (5.1%), and Capital Ventures International also have a good chunk of the company’s stocks.

Who Owns PayPal

who-owns-paypal — PayPal was first founded in 1998; it was called Confinity (among its founders was Peter Thiel); later, it merged with X.com, its major competitor, founded by Elon Musk (which would become known for other companies like Tesla and SpaceX). From this merger, PayPal was born. In 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. eBay spun off PayPal in 2015, which would be listed as an independent entity. Today PayPal owns brands like Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, and iZettle.

Who Owns Netflix

who-owns-netflix — Netflix’s largest individual shareholder is Reed Hastings, co-founder, and CEO of the company, with a 1.7% stake, valued at over $1.8 billion in 2022. Netflix runs a subscription-based business model that generated $29.6 billion in revenues, and it had over 221 million global members in 2021. Netflix’s business model runs only premium content on its platform, driven by its Netflix Originals shows. Netflix is also building an ad-supported version.

Who Owns TikTok

who-owns-tiktok — TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company owning several content platforms worldwide (Douyin, Toutiao, Xigua Video, Helo, Lark, Babe). Bytedance passed the $300 billion private market valuation by 2022, making around $58 billion in revenue in 2022, over $4 billion from TikTok.

Who Owns OpenAI

who-owns-openai — OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that transitioned into a for-profit organization in 2019, which comprised an entity called OpenAI LP and the non-profit parent foundation OpenAI. The lab, which was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and various others, has a core focus on the development of friendly AI that benefits society as a whole. Yet now has primarily evolved as a capped-for-profit entity with an exclusive commercial license to Microsoft.

Who Owns Balenciaga

who-owns-balenciaga — Balenciaga is a Spanish luxury fashion house that was founded in 1917 by designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. The company was initially located in the Basque region of Spain before the civil war in that country forced Balenciaga to move his operations to Paris in 1937. Kering acquired a 91% stake in Balenciaga in 2001 for an undisclosed sum. The French multinational then purchased the rights to the perfume brand which likely made them the sole owner.

Who Owns Gucci

who-owns-gucci — Gucci is owned by the french holding Kering, which completed its buyout of Gucci in an $8.8 billion deal in 2004. Today Gucci is the group’s largest brand, generating over $9.7 billion in 2021 on a $17.64 billion group revenue. Thus representing over 55% of Kering’s Group revenues in 2021.

Who Owns Louis Vuitton

who-owns-louis-vuitton — Louis Vuitton is owned by LVMH, among the largest luxury goods companies in the world. With over $53 billion in revenues by 2019. It owns 75 brands in six different sectors. Some of these brands comprise Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Christian Dior, Fendi, Loro Piana, Celine, Givenchy, Kenzo, Berluti, and Rimowa. LVMH is owned by the Arnault family (Bernard Arnault, the CEO, is among the wealthiest men on earth) with a 47.44% ownership stake and over 63.5% of the voting power. Thus asserting a tight control over the Luxury Empire.

Who Owns Adidas

who-owns-adidas — Adidas is a German multinational best known as a designer and manufacturer of sportswear and related accessories. It was founded in 1924 in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, and did not take on the Adidas name until 1949. The new company, known today as Adidas AG, is the holding company for the Adidas Group and the sole owner of Adidas. Some of the company’s largest shareholders include: Groupe Bruxelles Lambert SA (7.6%), Nassef Sawiris (3.3%), and Norges Bank Investment Management (2.8%).

Who Owns Burger King

who-owns-burger-kint — Burger King is an American multinational chain of fast-food restaurants that is headquartered in Miami, Florida. The first Burger King restaurant, then known as Insta-Burger King, was opened in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1953 by Keith Cramer and his stepfather Matthew Burns. Burger King Worldwide merged with the Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons in 2014. This precipitated the formation of parent company Restaurant Brands International, which is part-owned by former Burger King owner 3G Capital.

Who Owns Marvel

who-owns-marvel — Marvel, formerly known as Marvel Entertainment LLC, is an American entertainment company based in New York City that is best known for its comic books and film, TV, and video game franchises. The Marvel we know today is the result of a merger between toy subsidiary Toy Biz (now Marvel Toys) and Marvel Entertainment Group.

Who Owns Yeezy

who-owns-yeezy — Yeezy was a fashion brand that arose from a collaboration between German sportswear company Adidas and entrepreneur and music artist Kanye West. While Yeezy inspired a multitude of other brands in the fashion industry and earned revenue in the billions, the collaboration between West and Adidas ended abruptly in October 2022.

Who Owns Ferrari

who-owns-ferrari — Ferrari’s top individual shareholders include Exor (the Holding company of the Agnelli Family, also the owner of FIAT Chrysler) with 24% of its shares, Piero Ferrari (son of Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the company), and other institutional investors like BlackRock and T. Rowe Price Associates. Ferrari runs a car luxury business model famous for its iconic models, which in 2019 made over €3.7 billion in revenues ($4.3 billion) in sales.

Who Owns Volkswagen

who-owns-volkswagen — The major shareholder for Volkswagen is Porsche Automobil Holding SE, a company investing in various automakers. This is the holding of the Porsche family, who is the primary shareholder of Volkswagen, with a 31.3% ownership stake in the company and a 53.1% voting power. Volkswagen is an automaker empire with brands that comprise Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche, Bentley, and Ducati.

Who Owns Lamborghini

who-owns-lamborghini — Lamborghini is an Italian luxury sports car manufacturer that was founded in 1963 by manufacturing magnate Ferruccio Lamborghini. Since that time, ownership of the firm has changed several times. Another financial crisis in the late 1990s saw Lamborghini sold to Volkswagen through its subsidiary Audi AG. The subsidiary remains the owner of Lamborghini today.

Who Owns Bugatti

who-owns-bugatti — The iconic brand Bugatti, founded by Ettore Bugatti in 1909, is now owned by the German’s Volkswagen, one of the world’s largest automakers. Other brands in the Volkswagen family comprise Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley, and Ducati. As a high-performance car maker, Bugatti only sells a limited number of cars each year. Indeed, in 2019, Volkswagen sold 82 Bugatti, compared to 76 Bugatti in 2018.

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About The Author

Gennaro Cuofano

Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.