Philip Moore, Head of Custom Reports at Coresight Research joined Cheddar News to breakdown Walmart's stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings as inflation weighs on holiday shoppers.

Walmart Reports Q3 Earnings, Positive 2023 Outlook 

joining us now to discuss all of this is Phillip. Morehead of custom reports at corset Research Philip. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the show. What do you make of wal mart's report and what is it telling us about consumers ahead of this crucial holiday shopping season? Well, um Walmarts well positioned uh consumers are they mentioned in the call that they are gaining share and the share gains obviously are coming in the greatest part from walmart's brand perception as the low price leader. So folks, when they're faced with inflation, are moving to walmart for more and more of their their purchase basket. We survey consumers on a weekly basis, we have tracking surveys and we saw back at the beginning of October, mid October the week before Halloween, we saw a big jump in the intention and reported shopping at Walmart, they gained about 10% in food purchases and uh they gained about 7% in nonfood purchases starting october and that trend has held steady there up to about 65% of consumers say they will have shopped walmart will intend to shop walmart for their food in the next two weeks. So walmart's looking strong. I mean if you think about walmart and where they are, we also see that they are even stronger among suburban and Rural shoppers. So Walmart, you know, grew out of rural America Sam Walton, all below those. 35 years ago started as Wal Mart stores and their strategy of storing the country, starting in the in the outskirts is now serving them well as more people moved out of urban areas and into suburbs and into rural areas. Now, Philip in October we saw that the price of food did rise 0.6%. How is Walmart putting itself in a good position to maintain its margins here as food prices continue to rise? Well, walmart obviously has a lot of purchasing power as the world's largest retailer. So, um, you know, they have a very strong inventory management systems, they keep very close tabs on, you know, what people are buying and what people want. And they have a very effective strategies restoring, uh, for, you know, managing their inventory at the store level. And so they have what people want and they have close control on their suppliers and supply chain to keep costs down. Now, Albertsons and Kroger are set for a $25 billion Walmart? And other retailers like it? Well, walmart and, uh, sorry, Kroger and Albertsons have a very interesting store footprint where there's not a lot of overlap. So they would have large market share, they would, you know, be competing with, with walmart for food. And if they can clean up the small amount of overlap in their local footprints, which they have talked about doing spending off some of the Albertsons locations. Um, you know, it's up to the, obviously, up to the Trade Federal Trade Commission, but it looks like the deal should go through and provide another competitor, strong competitor for walmart and the food space. Now, Philip, unfortunately, we're out of time, but thank you for that great conversation that inside there, that's Phillip, more retail analyst at Corset Research.