Cheddar News looks back at a challenging year for big-box retail giant Walmart.

Taking a Look at Walmart as One of the Stocks of the Year

time. Now for one of our stocks of the year. Today, we're looking at walmart, the world's biggest big box retailer facing numerous challenges because of inflation and of course supply chain issues throughout 2022 its most recent quarter, the company did post better than expected earnings, with sales rising by nearly 9% beating estimates on the top and bottom line. But it's faced major challenges with the most obvious being inflation with surging prices for food, food and gas squeezing consumers in july. It slashed its full year profit guidance saying inflation is causing shoppers to spend more on necessities and less on items like clothing and electronics, walmart said it will have to offer deep discounts to get rid of general merchandise, hurting its profit margins, investors spooked by the warning moved away from the sector, taking down shares of Macy's american eagle and amazon the very next day. Another concern was excess inventory, supply chain and inflation issues loved the retailer to have way more supplies on hand than people were buying with employees complaining about unwashed kable back rooms packed full of pallets. The company said in May that it would make a concerted effort to reduce excess inventory and it's kept its word in its first quarter earnings call in May, the company reported a 32% year over year increase in inventory in the latest earnings call in november. That increase was only 13%. It's also expanding its online sales after the company struck gold at the start of the pandemic. Its e commerce grew 97% year over year during the second quarter of 2020. But despite major efforts such as offering early online black friday sales, the retailer, I was not able to reproduce that success this year, but research showed that it beat rival amazon with holiday shoppers who are hunting for those online deals on black friday dominating online searches for discounts. That's according to advertising technology company, capped if I searches for discounts on walmart search 386% year over year, blowing past amazon, which last year ranked first in captive five survey. And Walmart stock is outperforming the broader market just down about 3% year. To date, the Dow dropping more than 10% while the S&P dropped 20% in that very same period with a market cap of $380 billion. It's the large, largest big box store of the country, the second largest retailer in the world, checking in on how the stock is performing on the final trading session of the year. Let's take a look. It's down. Not too bad though, The walmart is in the red about 3/10 of a percent