international finance walmart project part 4

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Humber College *

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354

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Finance

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Nov 24, 2024

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Foreign Exchange Exposure Walmart Incorporated is an American retail company that operates internationally, with over 10,623 retail stores and 380 distribution facilities for a total of 11,003 stores throughout the world as of January 31, 2023, according to statista.com. According to Walmart corporate website, Walmart International operates in over 19 countries out of the U.S., including, Africa, Central America, China, India and Mexico. With the International operations, Walmart has dealt with significant Foreign Exchange Exposure as transaction exposure, economic exposure and translation exposure. The current business model of selling a high-volume of low-profit margin discounted products that Walmart is currently using, forces the company to source low cost products from all across the globe. This creates a great transaction exposure as when the company buys these low cost products in foreign countries, especially in China, Walmart will typically pay in the local currency. For example, “Only roughly 20% of Walmart’s retail products are from US-based suppliers. According to estimates, 70 to 80% of Walmart products are from China, excluding food, meat, and fresh produce.” (Jones, 2022). The Chinese currency the Renminbi, also known as the Chinese Yuan, is currency trading at 1 USD to 7.16 CNY. However, approximately 1 year ago, on January 12, 2023, the Yuan was trading at 1 USD to 6.74 CNY. This shows a difference of 0.42 CNY per 1 USD in just under 12 months. This greatly affects Walmart as certain purchases must be made in the Yuan, which when converted from the USD can cause a loss. If the company was to buy $100,000 USD worth of product in January from China , it would have cost the company just 674,000 CNY. However, if they were to wait until today's exchange rate, that same product would have cost the company 716,000 CNY. This poses a threat to great transaction exposure if all of the company's earnings are in one currency, such as the
USD. One of the ways that Walmart has attempted to mitigate this risk is through diversification of currencies, including the use of forward currency contracts and keeping currencies in their earned countries where feasible. This allows Walmart to mitigate risk by holding various currencies, allowing for less conversions and therefore less costs and exposure. Additionally, Walmart has been exposed to a great deal of economic exposure over the last few years, especially since the covid-19 pandemic. This has a direct link to transaction exposure, as certain economies may see increased costs to exports and imports as well as manufacturing competition in booming economies. Walmart has done an excellent job of risk mitigation for economic exposure, by diversifying their manufacturing facilities, as mentioned before to almost 20 countries. This allows them to finance and produce products in an array of markets, ultimately limiting the cost to export, import and sell products. Another way that Walmart can further limit their economic exposure is through currency swaps. This is typically done to eliminate risk and hedge long-term investments that can affect interest rate exposure through two parties. “This is typically done with companies to find more favourable loan rates in local currencies than they could find if they borrowed money from a bank in that country.” (Segal, 2021). As previously mentioned, Walmart is in 20 countries across the globe, which poses a foreign exposure risk to translation. This is when a company may find their asset, liabilities, or shareholder’s equity affected by the change in exchange rates. Similar to their transaction exposure risk, the same goes for their balance sheet, as this may be affected when the exchange rates change. This can be positive but also negative. For example, in the time from 2019 to 2023, the following data was provided by Finbox, which shows an analysis on the foreign exchange rate adjustments based on Walmart. According to findbox, “ Walmart's foreign exchange rate
adjustments decreased in 2019 (-438 million, -189.9%) and 2022 (-140 million, -159.6%) and increased in 2020 (-69 million, -84.2%), 2021 (235 million, -440.6%), and 2023 (-73 million, -47.9%).’ This shows the volatility of currency and how foreign exchange is an important high level issue for the company. Throughout the years since being incorporated in 1962, Walmart has grown into an international enterprise that has seen sales grow exponentially, and seen stores and investments grow to over 20 countries around the world. With this expansion, the company has seen a vast number of foreign exposure risks, such as transaction, economic and translation exposure. Through the various risk mitigation strategies that Walmart uses, including but limited to forward contracts, keeping profits in local currencies and currency swaps and hedging, the company has limited their risks, however as seen in the stats provided by Finbox, the company is still very much affected by the exposure to international markets and their foreign exchange exposures.
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