Bentonville, July 27 (UNI) The Walton family fortune fell $12.9 billion on Tuesday after Walmart Inc. slashed its earnings outlook for the second time this year, Bloomberg reported. Shares of the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, which is controlled by the family, tumbled as much as 9.1 percent in New York trading after it said, adjust- ed earnings per share will de- cline as much as 13 percent this year with US shoppers reining in spending on big-ticket items amid soaring consumer prices. Two months ago, the company said, earnings per share would only dip about 1 percent, while in February, it had predicted a modest increase.
The family’s late patriarch, Sam Walton, built the business around a discount culture that has, in the past, helped buoy its stock during recessionary times. In revising its outlook, Walmart cited the cost of reducing merchandise stockpiles that customers were increasingly reluctant to buy as inflation hits a four-decade high, Bloomberg reported. Walton’s three surviving children, Alice, Jim, and Rob, daughter-in-law Christy, and Christy’s son, Lukas, own just under half of the retailer. That gives them a combined net worth of about $198 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, down by 11 percent since the first of the year.
