U.S. retail giant Walmart saw a 13.3% jump in international sales in the quarter ended September, led by e-commerce major Flipkart's Big Billion Days sale event.
The world's largest retailer's international revenue rose to $26.8 billion in constant-currency terms, aided by Flipkart and its Mexican subsidiary Walmex.
"E-commerce sales on a constant currency basis were exceptionally strong, up 46% in the quarter. The earlier timing of Flipkart's Big Billion Days event was also a benefit to sales results," John David Rainey, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Walmart, said in an analyst call.
"In India, Flipkart had a great quarter, with strong customer response to our Big Billion Days event, which moved forward into Q3 this year from Q4 last year," Rainey said.
Flipkart witnessed over 1 billion visits during the eight-day event, he said, adding that the e-commerce platform saw more than 60% of those customers coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
PhonePe also continues to perform well, with annualised total payment volume, or TPV, now over $920 billion and reaching a record level of monthly transactions to about 3.6 billion, said Rainey.
According to a report by payment gateway PayU, there was a 133% rise in the number of transactions and a 124% growth in expenditure during this year's festive season sales compared to 2021, echoing economic recovery, increased UPI adoption by small businesses and consumers. Notably, the average ticket size for UPI transactions has gone down marginally (-4%). Consumers used UPI for small ticket items such as groceries, within city travel & entertainment, which could be the reason ticket size declined, the report says.
Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd, which operates e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, saw its net loss for the financial year 2022 widen 51% year-on-year to ₹4,362 crore compared with ₹2,882 crore loss in FY21, primarily on a significant rise in legal, marketing, transport, and other warehousing expenses.
The company's revenue from operations, however, surged 31% year-on-year to ₹10,659 crore during FY22 from ₹8,115.7 crore during FY21, its filings accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler showed.
Flipkart's ad expenses surged over 80% in FY22 to ₹1,946 crore from ₹1,073 crore in the last year, while it paid ₹1,224 crore legal charges in FY22 compared with ₹837 crore in the previous year.
Flipkart's net loss in the last fiscal year was the highest in the past four years. During FY20, FY19 and FY18, the Walmart-owned e-commerce platform's total losses stood at ₹1,936.6 crore, ₹1,624.4 crore and ₹1,159.4 crore, respectively. The company's large chunk of revenue comes from the e-commerce marketplace and IT-enabled services.
Last month, Flipkart launched Flipverse - a metaverse space where consumers can discover products in a photorealistic virtual destination and shop on the Flipkart app. In September, the e-commerce platform launched a new hotel-booking feature, Flipkart Hotels, to ramp up its offerings in the travel and hospitality sector.
