Should #Walmart Split His Activities?

Interesting article on Forbes about a potential strategic move Walmart may take: Should Walmart split in two or three its activites? Obviously, Walmart is by far the largest retailer in the world. So far ahead that no real competition could really threaten him on the global stage. Not even Amazon or Alibaba in my opinion. Here is the rank in sales of the most powerful retailers:

1. Walmart: $473 billions
2. Costco: $102 billions
3. Carrefour: 74,88 $90 billions
4. Amazon: 74,45 billions (even with a double digit growth each year it would take at least two decades to get back to Walmart)

But Walmart is struggling to reinvent itself. It still dominates the US market, have great international sales, but:

• The US market does not grow enough to keep a high growth pace.
• The Internet competition is a threat to instore sales
• Its facing high international competition in market such as China or Brazil.

This is the reason why the author of the article is thinking about splitting the company in different parts. Here how it could go:

Walmart U.S.                           $279.4 Billion

Walmart International            136.5 Billion

Sam’s Club                                  57.2 Billion

Total                                          $473.1 Billion

I believe the  split would make sense:

• Each company would be large enough to keep its strength in the market.
• All of them may have different strategic focus: In the US, to develop the Internet Activities, Walmart International, to focus on key markets. For Sam's Club, to find new locations and grow its real estate or develop new product ranges.
• It may allow to reevaluate the worth of shares, as it most of the time do for such spin offs.

By having such a move, Walmart may be better prepared to face its competition on the different markets.