By the time Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) officially kicks off its Black Friday specials at 6:00 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving Day, the world’s largest retailer will have several weeks of pre-Black Friday special offers behind it. The company is currently offering a wide variety of electronics gear at special online prices that are very low.
For example, a 55-inch Samsung 4K HDTV is currently on offer for $798, a savings of more than $400 from the list price of $1,200. A 40-inch 1080p Samsung HDTV is selling for $298, a savings of more than $400, and a Dell laptop with a 15.6-inch screen is available at a savings of $130.
What’s the big deal, so to speak? Black Friday and all its various tendrils are intended to make consumers thousands of offers they can’t refuse. And Walmart had better hope that customers can’t resist its bargains.
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When the company announced in October that next fiscal year profits would be down by as much as 12%, Walmart stock dropped 10% in one day. When the company reported third-quarter results last week, the EPS forecast for the fourth quarter ending in January rose from a prior range of $0.93 to $1.05 to a new range of $1.40 to $1.55. The new forecast includes an expected currency exchange headwind of $0.16 per share compared with a negative impact of $0.15 per share in the third quarter. Walmart continues to expect relatively flat total sales growth for the year, and said that without the negative impact of currency exchange rates full-year sales would have grown about 3%.
At website BestBlackFriday.com, Walmart got the nod as the winner of the Black Friday shopping sweepstakes:
[The store is not using the three-event format it used last year, but] will … bring back their hugely popular ad match and 1-hour guarantee. The ad match means they will literally match the price that any competitor is offering for the same product, in retail stores only. The 1-hour guarantee means that if any of the top doorbusters … are sold out in the first hour before you have a chance to purchase them, Walmart offers you a limited window to buy them after Black Friday at the same price. While other stores will be opening at 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving or earlier, Walmart is [sticking] to their 6 p.m. opening time …
The overall Black Friday discount is forecast at 39.55%, according to BestBlackFriday, and the shopping site expects a Walmart discount range of 30% to 35%. J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) is expected to show an average discount of 68% this year, according to retail information site WalletHub.
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And Walmart has even redefined Cyber Monday, the day following the four-day holiday weekend that has become synonymous with online bargains. The company said today that it would kick-off its Cyber Monday sales at 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday with special pricing on some 2,000 items available to online shoppers only.
Interestingly, Black Friday’s online sales are projected to reach $2.7 billion this year, not far below the $3 billion in sales predicted for Cyber Monday.
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