Walmart closures will impact a total of nine locations this year, including seven traditional retail locations and two places, in Illinois and Arkansas, that operate as “pickup only.”
Insider has reported that a small chunk of stores has closed each year since at least 2019. The company has not said exactly why the locations are closing.
Walmart has some 5,000 locations in the U.S. It is thought to be the nation’s largest private employer — and is also often a local minimum wage-setter. The company’s CEO, Doug McMillion, said in December that retail theft could drive the company to close stores.
Related: Walmart Is Raising Its Base Pay to $14 an Hour — Increasing Average Wages By $2
In Walmart’s earnings call on Tuesday, Walmart CFO, John David Rainey, said the company lowered its outlook for the year ahead due to consumers having fewer funds on hand and interest rate raises from the Federal Reserve. Walmart and Home Depot are both preparing for a difficult year ahead, according to CNBC.
“The consumer is still very pressured,” Rainey told CNBC. “And if you look at economic indicators, balance sheets are running thinner and savings rates are declining relative to previous periods. And so that’s why we take a pretty cautious outlook on the rest of the year.”
Walmart has said that store performance was a factor in a statement: “This decision was not made lightly and was reached only after a thorough review process… We have nearly 5,000 stores across the U.S. and unfortunately, some do not meet our financial expectations. While our underlying business is strong, these specific stores haven’t performed as well as we hoped.”
As Insider noted, the company’s attempt to get into a pickup-only model appears to have gone by the wayside — the two locations with those models, Bentonville, Arkansas, and Lincolnwood, Illinois, are closing.
Here’s the full list of locations that Walmart has confirmed will close this year or have already closed:
- Bentonville, Arkansas. 3701 SE Dodson Road
- Pinellas Park, Florida. 6900 US Highway 19 North
- Homewood, Illinois. 17550 South Halsted Street
- Plainfield, Illinois. 12690 South Route 59
- Lincolnwood, Illinois. 840 N. McCormick Boulevard
- Albuquerque, New Mexico. 301 San Mateo Boulevard SE
- Portland, Oregon. 1123 N. Hayden Meadows Drive
- Portland, Oregon. 4200 SE 82nd Avenue
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 10330 W. Silver Spring Drive
