Walmart Presses Rollbacks and Clearances for New Year

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 4:57AM EST · Published Jan 1, 8:02AM EST

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Walmart Presses Rollbacks and Clearances for New Year — © courtesy of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Now that holiday buying sprees have ended, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) appears to be in the midst of pushing out excess inventory. It has set a number of rollbacks and clearances just as 2018 begins. It is also a way to pile on revenue as it continues to show progress, particularly against Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).

Rollbacks are across a broad swath of categories, led by consumer electronics. Some of these are extremely aggressive. And RCA laptop’s price has been cut from $179.99 to $79.98. A Sceptre 55″ Class 4K (2160P) LED TV has been cut by $70 to $329.99. It is worth noting both are little known brands.

Other rollbacks and clearances are across a large selection of clothing and household goods. Most of the items are inexpensive, with many prices below $100.

It is always a guessing game as to how much clearances and incentive hurt a company’s margins will raising revenue. Among the companies about which this is hotly debated is Amazon and almost all car companies. Some investors have even speculated that Amazon’s e-commerce units may not make money in the last quarter of the year–to some extent due to challenges from Walmart.

Walmart has had a run both in revenue and stock market prices throughout 2017. Its shares rose 43% to $99. That made it one of the most successful Dow components. This happened during a year when many other mainstream retailers were battered, and questions arose about whether they will survive until the end of 2018

Walmart will need to use every trick in the book, and also write some new ones, if it hopes to duplicate 2017 in 2018.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.