Walmart de Mexico quarterly revenue slides on weak Central America sales

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Walmart’s Mexico unit on Tuesday said its first quarter revenue fell slightly from a year ago, hit by weaker sales in Central America where economies have suffered from pandemic lockdown measures.

Walmart de Mexico, known locally as Walmex,, brought in revenue of 170.76 billion pesos ($8.36 billion) in the January-to-March period, down 0.3% from a year ago.

While total sales in its main Mexico market grew 0.5%, sales in Central America fell 2.7%.

Overall, the company reported net profit of 10.1 billion pesos ($493.2 million) in the quarter, up 0.7% from the year-earlier period.

Walmart de Mexico said in a statement accompanying results that it was preparing to comply with Mexico’s modified labor law, which was recently reformed to limit the use of subcontracting.

The company, which is Mexico’s biggest retailer, added that it did not expect the new law to impact financial results for the year.

($1= 20.4200 pesos at end-March)

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Noe Torres, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)