Walmart stock has soared 58% this year to record highs, making its founding family richer than ever.
Retail legend Sam Walton's three surviving children are each worth more than $100 billion.
Walmart and the Waltons have benefited from a signature strategy and cost pressures on consumers.
Walmart stock has soared to record highs, lifting the retailer's founding family to new levels of wealth. Experts say its signature strategy has fueled the stellar run, and they're not surprised to see the Waltons reap the rewards.
Shares of Walmart have jumped 58% this year to about $83, valuing the company at nearly $670 billion at Wednesday's close. The stock surge has added more than $32 billion to the fortunes of each of founder Sam Walton's three surviving children — Jim, Rob, and Alice.
The siblings rank among the world's 20 wealthiest people and have net worths in excess of $100 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Together they're far richer than Elon Musk, who tops the rich list with a $237 billion net worth.
Walmart generated $643 billion in net sales and $27 billion in operating income last year. The Sam's Club owner has about 10,500 stores worldwide and employs around 2.1 million people, including almost 1.6 million in the US — roughly 1% of the workforce.
The megaretailer and its biggest shareholders owe much of their success to selling everyday products at low prices, David King, the Higdon Professor of Management at Florida State University and the coauthor of a 2017 case study on Walmart, told Business Insider.
Value for money is top of mind for many shoppers, who've been hit in recent years by higher prices for basics such as food, fuel, and housing, and higher monthly payments on their credit cards, car loans, mortgages, and other debts.
Inflation skyrocketed to a 40-year high of more than 9% in mid-2022 and remained above the Federal Reserve's 2% target in September. The central bank sought to curb the pace of price growth by raising interest rates to above 5% between March 2022 and July 2023, and only made its first cut this September.
Walmart also benefits from ubiquity, with 90% of the US population living within 10 miles of one of its stores, according to its website. The retailer has steadily expanded by entering smaller markets that could only support one large retailer — limiting competition — then using its scale economies to undercut mom-and-pop stores and drive them out of business, King said.
The company has also built a national logistics network to support its growing store count and thus bolster its purchasing power, enabling it to negotiate ever-lower prices from suppliers and offer greater value and convenience to customers, King added. He noted that Walmart and its associated businesses accounted for 16% of Procter & Gamble's sales last year.