Walmart Relisting Its Japan Unit Amid Global Reshuffle
Walmart Plans Japan Unit Re-Listing After Struggling to Find a Buyer
(Bloomberg) -- Walmart Inc. is re-listing its Japanese supermarket chain Seiyu following a decade-long struggle to compete with bigger local rivals.
The U.S. retailer will keep its majority stake in Seiyu after the listing, Walmart’s international division head Judith McKenna said in a statement Wednesday. The company also announced a mid-term business plan to offer lower prices, better products and grow e-commerce sales.
Walmart has been reshaping its international operations over the past year to focus on high-potential markets like India and China. In Japan, where it has failed to gain traction against local rivals like Aeon Co. and Seven & I Holdings Co., there was speculation that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer was preparing to sell Seiyu, which the company repeatedly denied.
“It’s hard for me to imagine what their strategy is,” Mike Allen, an analyst at Jefferies Japan, said of Walmart. “It’s a difficult environment right now particularly for big box retailers because they are — like everywhere else in the world — getting hit by online retailing and have fixed costs that are very difficult to control.”
Genya Murata, a spokesman for Seiyu, declined to comment on the timing of the listing. There are 334 Seiyu stores in Japan currently.
Walmart, which first invested in Seiyu in 2002 and took it private in 2008, has been investing in building up digital operations globally as it faces cost pressures and sluggish growth in its home market. Last year, it sold a majority stake in its Brazilian business and spent $16 billion to acquire India’s e-commerce leader Flipkart Group in its biggest-ever deal.
--With assistance from Grace Huang.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Du in Tokyo at ldu31@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rachel Chang at wchang98@bloomberg.net, Reed Stevenson
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