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Wmt vs. Cost Analysis; A History of Debt and Gold in Charts

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The key is not to predict the future but to be prepared for it.–Pericles

Wal-Mart vs. Costco

Data         WMT      Cost Difference
Supercenters 3158 448
Discount Stores 561 0
Sam’s Clubs 620 0
Neighborhood Mkts 266 0
Foreign Stores 6,148 174
    10,753 622 17.3 times
Employees 2,200,000 147,000  14.97 times
Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) 70,000 3,600  19.4 times
Revs. ($bil.) 495 107       4.63 times
Return on Tot. Cap (VL) 15% 13% 2%
Ret. On Equity (VL) 22% 14.50% 7.50%
Gross Profit Margin 24% 10% 140%
Oper. Income/Margin 5.90% 2.85% 100%
Sales per square foot 437 976 110%
Book Value $25 $25 0%
Price Aug. 2 $78.55 $119.10
P/BV 3.1 4.8 55%
Debt 37000 4800
Equity 82,500 13,825
Debt to Equity 45% 35%
Est. Growth
     Sales 6.50% 8.50%
     Earnings 9% 11%

cost vs wmt

sm cost vs wmt

Comparing

I think when you compare numbers, what strikes you is the difference in # of SKUs between retailers. WMT’s business model is much more labor intensive coupled with a lower-income customer. The squeeze on the middle class has crimped WMT.  You would think with WMT’s higher ROC and ROE compared to COST’s that WMT would not be lagging CostCo’s in share price performance but remember that COST is growing faster above its cost of capital and has more room to grow than behemoth, Wal-Mart. In other words, CostCo can redeploy more of its capital at higher rates than WMT can (grow its profits faster).

That said, the market knows this and has handicapped Costco with a higher price to book and P/E ratio than WMT’s. As an individual investor, your time might be better spent looking at smaller, more unknown companies to find mis-valuation. Also, when a company gets as big as WMT (1/2 TRILLION $ in sales), the law of large numbers sets in and the company becomes a magnet for social engineering and protest. But if you had to have me choose what company to own over the next ten years, I would choose COST because its moat is stronger (greater customer captivity) shown by its huge inventory turns/high sales per square foot plus greater PROFITABLE growth opportunities.  However, I do see WMT becoming more focused rather than expanding overseas where their local economies of scale are lessened.

My analysis is cursory, but for those that picked out the main differences, you have a better grasp of whether WMT can raise its employees’ wages to the level of Costco’s. It can not unless it reduces its SKUs and employees.

More analysis from others:

Why Wal-Mart Will Never Pay Like CostcoBloomberg writer Megan McArdle hits the nail on the head with her analysis of the situation in Why Wal-Mart Will Never Pay Like Costco.Wal-Mart is trying to move into Washington, a move that said local housing blog has not enthusiastically supported. Hence, we’ve been treated to a lot of impassioned reheatings of that old standby: “Costco shows it’s possible” for Wal-Mart to pay much higher wages. The addition of Trader Joe’s and QuikTrip is moderately novel, but basically it’s the same argument: Costco/Trader Joe’s/QuikTrip pays higher wages than Wal-Mart; C/TJ/QT have not gone out of business; ergo, Wal-Mart could pay the same wages that they do, and still prosper.Obviously at some level, this is a true but trivial insight: Wal-Mart could pay a cent more an hour without going out of business. But is it true in the way that it’s meant — that Wal-Mart could increase its wages by 50 percent and still prosper?Upper-middle-class people who live in urban areas — which is to say, the sort of people who tend to write about the wage differential between the two stores — tend to think of them as close substitutes, because they’re both giant stores where you occasionally go to buy something more cheaply than you can in a neighborhood grocery or hardware store. However, for most of Wal-Mart’s customer base, that’s where the resemblance ends. Costco really is a store where affluent, high-socioeconomic status households occasionally buy huge quantities of goods on the cheap: That’s Costco’s business strategy (which is why its stores are pretty much found in affluent near-in suburbs). Wal-Mart, however, is mostly a store where low-income people do their everyday shopping.

As it happens, that matters a lot.  Costco has a tiny number of SKUs in a huge store — and consequently, has half as many employees per square foot of store. Their model is less labor intensive, which is to say, it has higher labor productivity. Which makes it unsurprising that they pay their employees more.

But what about QuikTrip and Trader Joe’s? I’m going to leave QuikTrip out of it, for two reasons: first, because they’re a private company without that much data, and second, because I’m not so sure about that statistic. QuikTrip’s website indicates a starting salary for a part-time clerk in Atlanta of $8.50 an hour, which is not all that different from what Wal-Mart pays its workforce.

Trader Joe’s is also private, but we do know some stuff about it, like its revenue per-square foot (about $1,750, or 75 percent higher than Wal-Mart’s), the number of SKUs it carries (about 4,000, or the same as Costco, with 80 percent of its products being private label Trader Joe’s brand), and its demographics (college-educated, affluent, and older). “Within a 15–minute driving radius of a potential site,” one expert told a forlorn Savannah journalist, “there must be at least 36,000 people with four–year college degrees who have a median age of 44 and earn a combined household income of $64K a year.” Costco is similar, but with an even higher household income — the average Costco household makes more than $80,000 a year.

In other words, Trader Joe’s and Costco are the specialty grocer and warehouse club for an affluent, educated college demographic. They woo this crowd with a stripped-down array of high quality stock-keeping units, and high-quality customer service. The high wages produce the high levels of customer service, and the small number of products are what allow them to pay the high wages. Fewer products to handle (and restock) lowers the labor intensity of your operation. In the case of Trader Joe’s, it also dramatically decreases the amount of space you need for your supermarket … which in turn is why their revenue per square foot is so high. (Costco solves this problem by leaving the stuff on pallets, so that you can be your own stockboy).

Wal-Mart’s customers expect a very broad array of goods, because they’re a department store, not a specialty retailer; lots of people rely on Wal-Mart for their regular weekly shopping. The retailer has tried to cut the number of SKUs it carries, but ended up having to put them back, because it cost them in complaints, and sales. That means more labor, and lower profits per square foot. It also means that when you ask a clerk where something is, he’s likely to have no idea, because no person could master 108,000 SKUs. Even if Wal-Mart did pay a higher wage, you wouldn’t get the kind of easy, effortless service that you do at Trader Joe’s because the business models are just too different. If your business model inherently requires a lot of low-skill labor, efficiency wages don’t necessarily make financial sense.

If you want Wal-Mart to have a labor force like Trader Joe’s and Costco, you probably want them to have a business model like Trader Joe’s and Costco — which is to say that you want them to have a customer demographic like Trader Joe’s and Costco. Obviously if you belong to that demographic — which is to say, if you’re a policy analyst, or a magazine writer — then this sounds like a splendid idea. To Wal-Mart’s actual customer base, however, it might sound like “take your business somewhere else.”
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/08/wal-mart-is-not-costco-so-why-should-it.html#s5mT9QlDRl4fqLdG.99

 

From www.Morningstar.com

Concentrating on fewer stock-keeping units generates buying power for Costco on par with, or perhaps even greater than, larger mass merchants. At first glance, excluding gasoline, at about $60 billion in U.S. sales Costco seems at a scale disadvantage against Wal-Mart’s WMT $265 billion domestic purchasing power. However, Costco concentrates its merchandise purchases on 3,300-3,800 active SKUs per warehouse, compared with the average 50,000-75,000 SKUs at a Wal-Mart superstore. As an illustration, if we assume a straight average, that calculates to more than $16 million in sales per SKU at Costco compared with just over $3.5 million-$5 million per SKU at Wal-Mart. Moreover, the company limits its buys to only specific, faster-selling items. Costco turns its inventories in less than 30 days. This variable cost parity with larger mass merchants, along with the little or zero mark-up requirement of its membership business model, produces price leadership for Costco on the products it chooses to sell.

Note sales per square foot: http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Costco_Wholesale_(COST)/Data/Sales_per_sq._ft

Unlike its big-box peers, Costco’s international operations generate returns above its cost of capital. The company owns about 80% of its properties, operates its business at an EBIT margin below 3%, and is at the earlier stages of international expansion but still generates on average 12% returns on invested capital because of its low fixed asset base. In its fiscal 2012 year, just 439 domestic warehouses generated roughly $60 billion in revenue (excluding fuel). That calculates to $135 million in sales per unit, or $960 per square feet, which we estimate is about 2.3 times higher than Wal-Mart supercenters. That powerful unit model also works in international markets, where sales productivity levels remain high at $900 per square feet. As result, despite likely lacking logistical scale, returns on net assets for operations outside of North America are roughly 12%, above the company’s cost of capital. This is in contrast to the 6%-7% RONA range for Wal-Mart’s international operations over the past decade.
Economic Moat 05/09/13

We assign Costco a narrow economic moat. We base this on its business model’s loss-leader capabilities and ever-increasing buying power. Membership fees are the main driver of operating profits, so Costco has the ability to sell virtually any consumer product at wholesale rather than retail prices. This makes it very difficult for other retail concepts to compete with Costco on price. Moreover, its price leadership position is reinforced because the company concentrates its merchandise buys on much fewer and faster-turning SKUs, which generates disproportionate purchasing power for its size. Additionally, the company does not advertise and its austere warehouse format requires much lower maintenance capital expenditures. Therefore, the membership wholesale business model has a sustained cost advantage versus other retail operators that sell the same product categories.

Costco WalMart Case   The document to read

COSTCO_Why Good Jobs Are Good for Retailers_ZTon

WMT Annual Report 2013  and Costco 2012 Annual Report (7)

 

For those who feel they DESERVE a prize simply email me at aldridge56@aol.com with PRIZE in the subject heading.

Gold, Debt and History

Gold-Bull-Debt-Bear-in-50-Charts-by-Incrementum-Liechtenstein

Note page 10, the Stock to flow ratio for gold is 65 years compared to about a year for both oil and copper. Gold is money.

Pages 60 to 61, how Austrian Economics is applied.

Notes: I hope to post my rough draft of the CSInvesting Analysis Handbook by the end of the week.  I have a book recommendation coming…….

 

Case Study on Business Models: Wal-Mart vs. Costco

costco

Cost and WMT_CS for background

WMT Logo

CASE STUDY

Can you tell me the key differences between Wal-Mart’s (not just Sam’s Club) and Costco’s business models?  Could Wal-Mart raise it’s minimum wage to Costco’s higher level without effecting profits. Why or why not.

This case gives you a way to learn about different retail business models.  How would you go about answering this question?

HINT: What would be the big difference between a Wal-Mart and a Costco store as soon as you entered?

If a union leader from Wal-Mart wanted to have its members have the same wage rates as Costco, how would you advise?

I am not asking for a valuation, but an analysis of the differences between retail models. Is one better than the other?

Harvard Business School Magazine December 2006

The High Cost of Low Wages

by Wayne F. Cascio

Executive Summary from Harvard Business School 

Wal-Mart’s legendary obsession with cost containment shows up in countless ways, including aggressive control of employee benefits and wages. Managing labor costs isn’t a crazy idea, of course. But stingy pay and benefits don’t necessarily translate into lower costs in the long run.

Consider Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, which compete fiercely on low-price merchandise. Among warehouse retailers, Costco—with 338 stores and 67,600 full-time employees in the United States—is number one, accounting for about 50% of the market. Sam’s Club—with 551 stores and 110,200 employees in the United States—is number two, with about 40% of the market.

Though the businesses are direct competitors and quite similar overall, a remarkable disparity shows up in their wage and benefits structures. The average wage at Costco is $17 an hour. Wal-Mart does not break out the pay of its Sam’s Club workers, but a full-time worker at Wal-Mart makes $10.11 an hour on average, and a variety of sources suggest that Sam’s Club’s pay scale is similar to Wal-Mart’s. A 2005 New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse reported that at $17 an hour, Costco’s average pay is 72% higher than Sam’s Club’s ($9.86 an hour). Interviews that a colleague and I conducted with a dozen Sam’s Club employees in San Francisco and Denver put the average hourly wage at about $10. And a 2004 Business Week article by Stanley Holmes and Wendy Zellner estimated Sam’s Club’s average hourly wage at $11.52.

On the benefits side, 82% of Costco employees have health-insurance coverage, compared with less than half at Wal-Mart. And Costco workers pay just 8% of their health premiums, whereas Wal-Mart workers pay 33% of theirs. Ninety-one percent of Costco’s employees are covered by retirement plans, with the company contributing an annual average of $1,330 per employee, while 64 percent of employees at Sam’s Club are covered, with the company contributing an annual average of $747 per employee.

Costco’s practices are clearly more expensive, but they have an offsetting cost-containment effect: Turnover is unusually low, at 17% overall and just 6% after one year’s employment. In contrast, turnover at Wal-Mart is 44% a year, close to the industry average. In skilled and semi-skilled jobs, the fully loaded cost of replacing a worker who leaves (excluding lost productivity) is typically 1.5 to 2.5 times the worker’s annual salary. To be conservative, let’s assume that the total cost of replacing an hourly employee at Costco or Sam’s Club is only 60% of his or her annual salary. If a Costco employee quits, the cost of replacing him or her is therefore $21,216. If a Sam’s Club employee leaves, the cost is $12,617. At first glance, it may seem that the low-wage approach at Sam’s Club would result in lower turnover costs. But if its turnover rate is the same as Wal-Mart’s, Sam’s Club loses more than twice as many people as Costco does: 44% versus 17%. By this calculation, the total annual cost to Costco of employee churn is $244 million, whereas the total annual cost to Sam’s Club is $612 million. That’s $5,274 per Sam’s Club employee, versus $3,628 per Costco employee.

In return for its generous wages and benefits, Costco gets one of the most loyal and productive workforces in all of retailing, and, probably not coincidentally, the lowest shrinkage (employee theft) figures in the industry. While Sam’s Club and Costco generated $37 billion and $43 billion, respectively, in U.S. sales last year, Costco did it with 38% fewer employees—admittedly, in part by selling to higher-income shoppers and offering more high-end goods. As a result, Costco generated $21,805 in U.S. operating profit per hourly employee, compared with $11,615 at Sam’s Club. Costco’s stable, productive workforce more than offsets its higher costs.

These figures challenge the common assumption that labor rates equal labor costs. Costco’s approach shows that when it comes to wages and benefits, a cost-leadership strategy need not be a race to the bottom.

Have a GREAT WEEKEND and HAPPY LABOR DAY to those in the U.S.

Best response gets a choice of prizes.

THE FOURTH REICH

 Why the U.S. IS Using Syria as a Pre-Text to War

http://www.youtube.com/user/StormCloudsGathering?feature=watch

Always ask, “Qui Bono?” Who benefits from a Mid-East War?

The U.S. needs to attack Syria to stop Russian pipelines from feeding Europe and hastening the fall of the Petrodollar:  http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/podcast/5015/holiday-tradition-fresh-jackass