Walmart gaining ground on Amazon; online sales soar

Walmart is making headway in its pitched battle against Amazon, with online sales soaring in the most recent quarter.

Those sales leaped 40 percent in the U.S., a sign that Walmart’s aggressive moves to bolster its e-commerce business by ramping up fashion, adding thousands of new choices and scooping up other, niche sites, is paying off.

Physical stores held their own as well during the company’s latest quarter, which spanned May through July. Sales at locations open at least a year rose 4.5 percent, the biggest uptick in more than a decade, as shoppers flocked to their local Walmart to pick up groceries, clothing and seasonal items. Not only did more customers head to their stores, increasing foot traffic 2.2 percent, they spent more money while they were there.

“We’re getting new customers,” Greg Foran, CEO of Walmart U.S., said in a media call Thursday, “and we’re getting existing customers to put an extra item in’’ their shopping carts.

Those trends encouraged investors, who bid up the company’s stock more than 9 percent, closing at $98.64 a share Thursday.

Walmart has been challenging ecommerce giant Amazon on its own turf, unveiling a revamped website in May, launching new online shopping experiences for items ranging from couches to cribs, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase retail sites such as Jet and premium menswear seller Bonobos.

At a time when the grocery sector has been shaken by Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, Walmart is also planning to make grocery delivery a possibility for 40 percent of the country and allow customers to pick up grocery items ordered online at more than 1,800 stores.

Hefty investments and the need to continue attracting customers with low prices did weigh down the bottom line. The retailer reported a net loss of $861 million, or 29 cents a share, in the latest quarter. “These pressures are unlikely to dissipate as the year progresses,” Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy GlobalData, said in a note.