Wal-Mart de Mexico Sales Pick Up in June

Sales at Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB, Mexico's biggest retailer, rose in June from the previous month, with contributions from same-store gains in both Mexico and Central America, the company said Thursday.

Walmex, as the unit of Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is also known, said sales in June rose 8% from a year earlier, to 43.4 billion Mexican pesos ($2.4 billion). That brought sales for the first six months of the year to 266.5 billion pesos, up 8.3% from the same period of 2016, compared with a 7.3% rise in the first quarter of this year.

Same-store sales in Mexico rose 7.2% in June, thanks to 0.2% more customers who spent on average 7% more per visit. Newly opened stores contributed another 1.4 percentage points to sales growth. In Central America, same-store sales rose 6.1% and total sales were 10.4% higher in local currency terms.

Several analysts said Walmex's "short prices" summer campaign in Mexico would contribute to sales growth, compensating for a difficult comparison with the year-earlier month.

"Walmex has been increasing its price gap versus competitors since 2016," said Credit Suisse in a report.

Some macroeconomic tailwinds for retailers have been subsiding, however, with nominal wage increases less than current inflation, consumer confidence still below year-earlier levels, and consumer credit slowing, the bank added.

Walmex plans to report its second-quarter financial results on July 27.

Write to Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 06, 2017 17:54 ET (21:54 GMT)