Walmart’s last-mile delivery service business, Walmart GoLocal, has topped 1 million deliveries in its first year, the retailer today revealed. The company offered a brief update on the state of its newer delivery business during its Q2 earnings call on Tuesday, where it noted that GoLocal had been growing its support of local merchants’ delivery operations and was also now on track to reach 5,000 pickup locations by the end of the year.
Announced in August 2021, GoLocal is Walmart’s attempt to leverage its own delivery platform to service the needs of other merchants, both large and small. Merchants can use the service for a variety of deliveries, including scheduled and unscheduled deliveries, and even same-day. The service itself is powered by those Walmart had developed for its own delivery needs, including its in-house Express Delivery service, which promises delivery in two hours or less. GoLocal deliveries, however, aren’t handled by Walmart’s own staff, but rather gig workers sourced through Walmart’s Spark Driver program — the same program that supports Walmart’s same-day delivery operations.
Over time, the retail giant aims to grow GoLocal into a larger business as more merchants shift to e-commerce. It’s also one of multiple initiatives underway designed to help Walmart generate additional revenue by meeting the needs of other retailers. Last year, for instance, Walmart announced it would sell its own e-commerce technologies to other retailers.
“We continue to sign up larger-scale customers, and we’re making strides on the bigger unlock, which are small and medium-sized businesses,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told investors, speaking about GoLocal’s growth. “Our technology and expertise will help so many of these businesses grow while contributing to our operating margins over time,” he said.
Little more was shared about the operation, like its contributions to Walmart’s bottom line, for example. But the exec did say the service was receiving “strong” client satisfaction scores and was continuing to sign up larger-scale businesses.
“We’re making strides on the bigger unlock, which are small and medium-sized businesses,” McMillon added. “Our technology and expertise will help so many of these businesses grow while contributing to our operating margins over time.”
The update follows recent news that Walmart entered into a deal with EV startup Canoo to buy 4,500 all-electric delivery vehicles to help it deliver online orders initially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as well as help serve the retailer’s GoLocal delivery service business, it said at the time. In addition to helping Walmart achieve its own business goals, the deal also helped the retailer from a competitive standpoint as it could stop Canoo from selling its electric vans to Walmart rival Amazon.
Walmart beat analysts’ expectations in its fiscal second quarter, driving shares up by over 5%. Driven by demand for groceries and other daily essentials as well as higher prices due to inflation and support from higher-income shoppers, Walmart pulled in $152.86 billion in revenue versus the $150.81 billion Wall Street had forecast.
Earnings per share were $1.77 versus $1.62 expected. Net income also grew to $5.15 billion, up from $4.28 billion in the year-ago quarter.
