It’s safe to say that 2015 has been a transitional year for Walmart. Earlier this year, the company announced plans to increase the wages for more than 100,000 of their employees. While that is great news for many workers across the country, the company experienced its largest one-day stock drop since the late ’80s on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. Shares plummeted 10 percent after the world’s biggest retailer released a dismal outlook on sales for the year as they continue to work at realigning business strategy to focus more on the wage increase mentioned above and to invest in the continually growing trend of e-commerce.
During an analysts meeting in New York, the projections included a warning that company profits could experience a 12 percent drop through the next two years. According to the report, those affected the most from the stock’s nosedive are the heirs to the big box store chain fortune — which is upwards of $120 billion dollars — who kissed $11 billion of that fortune goodbye on Wednesday. That’s a hell of a lot of cheese!
While that’s a sizable loss, to be sure, this isn’t anything new for Christy, Jim, Alice, and Rob Walton— the company’s stock has experienced a 30 percent drop this year alone, which, according to the report by Bloomberg, translates to a $41 billion loss since January 1. The Waltons weren’t the only ones affected by the company’s bleak outlook, however. Renowned billionaire Warren Buffett, whose company Berkshire Hathaway is an investor in the big box retailer, experienced a loss of roughly $543 million.