Walmart to Close Multiple Stores After They ‘Fail to Meet Financial Expectations’

A Walmart store in Chicago, Ill., on Nov. 20, 2018. (Reuters/Kamil Krzaczynski

Retail giant Walmart is set to shutter multiple stores across three states after they failed to perform as well as expected, a company spokesperson has confirmed.

A Walmart in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico, is closing down in March after underperforming, as is the South Halsted Street, Homewood store in Illinois.

One store located at West Silver Spring Drive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is also shuttering next month, a Walmart spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. Another is shuttering at Route 59, Plainfield, Illinois, in March.

The spokesperson said the decision was “not made lightly and was reached only after a thorough review process.”

Walmart has 5,000 stores across the United States.

The spokesperson added that some of the stores do not meet Walmart’s financial expectations and that while “our underlying business is strong,” the closing stores did not perform as well as the retailer had hoped.

“There is no single cause for why a store closes—our decision is based on several factors, including historical and current financial performance, and is in line with the threshold that guides our strategy to close underperforming locations,” the spokesperson said.

A third Walmart Pickup at McCormick Blvd. in Lincolnwood, Illinois, will close to the public by Feb. 17, according to Walmart.

“As this is a pickup and delivery-only location, we have taken what we learned from this location and made it part of how we operate pick-up and delivery from our surrounding stores, where we look forward to serving our customers,” the spokesperson said.

Stores Did Not Perform Well

The upcoming store closures come shortly after Walmart CEO Doug McMillon warned in December that retail theft is “higher than what it has historically been” and that if not corrected over time, “prices will be higher, and/or stores will close.”

“I think local law enforcement being staffed and being a good partner is part of that equation, and that’s normally how we approach it,” McMillon said in an interview on CNBC.

The CEO stopped short of stating exactly which locations could be shuttered due to rising theft incidents.

Retail Theft on the Rise

A September report by the National Retail Federation found that retail theft and other inventory loss—known as “shrink”— had an average rate of 1.4 in 2021, which is consistent with the past five years.

When taken as a percentage of total retail sales in 2021, that shrink rate represents $94.5 billion in losses, up from $90.8 billion in 2020, which the federation said is primarily been driven by theft, including theft as part of organized retail crime.

Retailers, on average, saw a 26.5 percent increase in organized retail crime incidents in 2021, according to the report,

As a result, many large retailers, including Walmart, began locking some higher-priced items away in cabinets or storing them behind glass shields. Still, such measures haven’t always proven successful.

In May last year, the Attorney General’s Office and Albuquerque Police created the Organized Retail Crime Unit amid rising retail thefts, carrying out a special week-long retail operation at one of Walmart’s stores in Albuquerque—which is now set to close. During that operation, officials arrested 16 people. Since September 2022, the team’s conducted eight operations, arresting about 85 people.

It is not clear if the latest store closures are also connected to rising retail crime.

The Epoch Times has contacted Walmart for comment.