Walmart’s operations in India had a mixed fourth quarter (Q4), as ecommerce arm Flipkart expanded its positive contribution margin, but the demerger of its digital payments subsidiary PhonePe dragged down the numbers.
Walmart’s top executives stated on its Q4 earnings call that Flipkart was driving the retail giant’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) and revenue growth. Noting that Flipkart had made significant investments in infrastructure over the previous three years, Rainey stated that the ecommerce giant was now reaping the benefits of this infrastructure, which could be scaled at a low marginal cost. He attributed the rising contribution profit to this, adding that the retail behemoth was overjoyed with the news.
In terms of PhonePe, Rainey stated that the digital payments giant processed an annualised total payments volume (TPV) of more than $950 Bn in Q4, an increase of nearly 50% over the previous year. According to Walmart, PhonePe has over 4 billion monthly transactions.
