Walmart CEO Doug McMillon is retiring early subsequent 12 months, after overseeing the highest U.S. retailer’s transformation into an e-commerce behemoth, the corporate mentioned Friday in a submitting.
The longtime CEO might be succeeded by John Furner, the Walmart U.S. CEO, on Feb. 1, in accordance with the submitting.
McMillon, who stepped into the highest function at Walmart in February 2014, will formally retire as of Jan. 31. He’ll proceed to function an government officer of the corporate and be employed by Walmart as an advisor by means of Jan. 31, 2027.
Furner, 51, has been the CEO of Walmart’s U.S. enterprise since 2019. In that function, he oversees greater than 4,600 shops and the most important sector of the corporate. He began on the firm in 1993 as an hourly affiliate.
Walmart Inc. President and CEO Doug McMillon delivers a keynote handle throughout CES 2024 at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas on January 9, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller | Getty Photographs
The announcement of the CEO transition comes solely six days earlier than the retailer is ready to report quarterly earnings. Walmart shares had been up 13% this 12 months as of Thursday’s shut, as the corporate grows its digital enterprise and wins over extra high-income customers.
For greater than a decade, McMillon, 59, has led the retail big and overseen the corporate’s progress as an e-commerce chief. He additionally oversaw the enterprise throughout a tumultuous time marked by the Covid pandemic, provide chain disruptions, excessive inflation and tariff adjustments.
Throughout his time main the corporate, Walmart’s shares have risen practically 300%. The corporate’s inventory fell greater than 2% in premarket buying and selling Friday.
Walmart inventory since Feb. 1, 2014.
From hourly workers to CEOs
McMillon and Furner have had comparable paths to the highest function at Walmart. Each have spent about three a long time at Walmart. They each started as hourly associates and moved up the ranks on the retail big, serving in merchandising and operations roles. Each additionally served as chief executives of its warehouse membership, Sam’s Membership.
Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) introduced that its Board of Administrators has elected John Furner, 51, to succeed Doug McMillon, 59, as President and Chief Government Officer of Walmart Inc., efficient February 1, 2026.
Courtesy: Walmart Inc.
In a press release, Walmart chairman Greg Penner described Furner as “the best chief to information Walmart into the following chapter of our progress and transformation.”
“After beginning as an hourly affiliate and being with us for over 30 years in a wide range of management roles throughout all three of our working segments, John understands each dimension of our enterprise – from the gross sales flooring to world technique,” Penner added.
“Serving as Walmart’s CEO has been an important honor and I am grateful to our Board and the Walton household for the chance,” McMillon mentioned in a press release.
He mentioned Furner’s “curiosity and digital acumen mixed with a deep dedication to our individuals and tradition will allow him to take us to the following degree.”
Together with Walmart, big-box competitor Goal can be poised to get a brand new chief in early 2026. Goal introduced final month that Michael Fiddelke, chief working officer and former chief monetary officer, will succeed longtime Goal CEO Brian Cornell on Feb. 1.
Digital progress and workforce transformation
Because the chief of Walmart, McMillon performed an instrumental function in turning the nation’s largest grocer into an e-commerce big and positioning the corporate to promote extra ads and extra discretionary merchandise, together with dozens of eggs and gallons of milk.
Throughout his early years as CEO, McMillon greenlit the $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet.com in 2016, an e-commerce startup that Walmart hoped would gasoline digital progress and provides it credibility because it tried to battle again towards Amazon’s meteoric rise.
The startup’s acquisition — significantly its steep price ticket — prompted debates in retail circles about whether or not the retail big had overpaid for the asset and if that transfer was wanted to assist Walmart navigate a rocky entry into the world of e-commerce. But the deal gained Walmart expertise with digital know-how, significantly Jet.com founder and serial entrepreneur Marc Lore who had bought his earlier firm, Quidsi, the mum or dad of Diapers.com, to Amazon and labored for Amazon for years.
Throughout Lore’s years as chief of Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce enterprise, Walmart purchased digital native companies together with menswear firm Bonobos and birthed different in-house ideas, corresponding to mattress model Allswell. Walmart later bought Bonobos and different digital companies, and shuttered Jet.com in 2020.
Although the Jet.com deal didn’t meet some Wall Avenue buyers’ expectations, McMillon on a name with analysts on the time credited the acquisition for “jump-starting the progress we have made the previous few years” in digital progress and curbside pickup and supply.
Over the previous 5 years, Walmart has leaned on its membership program, Walmart+, and its third-party market because it tries to fend off Amazon’s e-commerce dominance. It launched Walmart+, its personal subscription service and its reply to Amazon Prime, in 2020 and has continued so as to add perks like streaming by means of Paramount+.
By way of its third-party market, it has bulked up its merchandise choices on digital cabinets by leaning on unbiased sellers to supply its clients with a wider vary of clothes gadgets, magnificence manufacturers and even luxurious purses. The mannequin, which mirrored Amazon’s strategy, additionally allowed Walmart to earn money in new methods, corresponding to promoting adverts and achievement providers to sellers.
A CNBC investigation earlier this 12 months discovered Walmart’s market increase got here because it made it simpler than Amazon did over time for sellers to affix the platform. CNBC uncovered no less than 43 distributors who had taken the identification of one other enterprise to promote on Walmart’s market, and a few of these accounts had been providing counterfeit magnificence merchandise.
Elsewhere within the firm, McMillon additionally shook up Walmart’s pay construction for its tons of of hundreds of workers, asserting in 2015 that the corporate would give a increase to half 1,000,000 hourly workers and improve wages to $9 an hour — a transfer that on the time confronted sharp criticism on Wall Avenue.
In newer years, Walmart has hiked wages a number of extra instances. But it surely has confronted persistent criticism from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and different politicians who’ve argued the corporate has did not share sufficient of its income with hourly workers by means of pay and advantages.
Because the nation’s largest non-public employer, Walmart has additionally been carefully watched because the rise of synthetic intelligence brings workforce adjustments and will threaten employment.
McMillon lately mentioned that AI “goes to vary actually each job.”
In a press release, McMillon referred to the expansion of AI being a brand new dynamic dealing with his successor. And, he mentioned, Furner is “uniquely able to main the corporate by means of this subsequent AI-driven transformation.”
