Wal-Mart de México, S.A.B. de C.V. (BMV:WALMEX)
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Apr 30, 2026, 1:59 PM CST
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Earnings Call: Q3 2025

Oct 29, 2025

Salvador Villaseñor
Head of Investor Relations, Walmart

Good morning, everyone. I'm Salvador Villaseñor, Head of Investor Relations at Walmart, and I want to thank you for joining once again to our live Q&A session following our third quarter results, which were published yesterday evening. As always, we will make every effort to answer as many questions as we can in the 45 minutes we have scheduled for this call. As a courtesy to others, we kindly ask you to limit yourself to one question. I will now hand over to our recently appointed CEO and President of Walmart de México y Centroamérica, Cristian Barrientos Pozo, who will present the team and give his initial remarks before going into the first question. Please, Cristian, go ahead.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you, Salvador, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We're hosting this live Q&A from Costa Rica right after our board meeting yesterday. I'm here with Paulo Garcia, our CFO, with Javier Andrade, our recently appointed CMO for Mexico, and Cristina Ronski, our CEO for Walmart Centroamérica. Before we begin, I would like to share a few reflections from my first 90 days since rejoining Walmart now as a CEO. Over the past three months, I have spent time visiting many of our stores and distribution centers across both Mexico and Centroamérica, and I have seen firsthand how we are delivering our purpose. It's been energizing to see the evolution of the business since I left the region almost three years ago. Even more exciting are the opportunities that I see going forward.

I'm convinced that with our renewed focus on the execution of our fundamentals, the strength of our people, and the newly appointed leadership team, we're very well positioned to take Walmart to the next level. So now we are open to your questions.

Moderator

The first question is from Mr. Alejandro Fuchs from Itaú BBA. Please go ahead.

Alejandro Fuchs
VP of Equity Research, Itaú BBA

Thank you, Operator. Hola, Cristian, Paulo, Javier, Cristina, Salvador. Thank you for the space for questions. My question would be for Cristian, maybe on Bodega. I wanted to discuss a little bit some of the performance of this quarter, looking at same-store sales per format. It seems that it's falling a little bit behind Sam's and Supercenter in the context of kind of easy comps. So I wanted to get your thoughts on these first months that you just discussed in Mexico, coming back, having had a lot of experience with the brand for so many years. What are some of the strategies that you're thinking for Bodega maybe to grow a little bit faster its same-store sales? And maybe you can share a little bit of the early strategy, maybe early findings that you're seeing at Bodega, and how do you see it performing for the future? Thank you.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

No, thank you very much. And as you mentioned, Bodega performed in the quarter a little bit behind Sam's. But we are seeing a really strong business in the three formats we are seeing in this quarter, evolution in terms of their relative performance against different banners. And we are seeing more than 20 weeks gaining share in Bodega. So we're confident that with the value proposition that we had in place, we are performing well. We have improving. And as I mentioned in the webcast, we are very focused on things that we can control, means EDLP, availability, and the evolution on demand. We see a ton of opportunities in all our business, and particularly in Bodega, trying to create access to low-income customers to the prices that we can deliver for them so we can accomplish our purpose to save them money and live better.

So we're very confident with the future of Bodega and with our three banners that we have. I don't know if you have more to add, Paulo.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

No, I think it's okay. As you said, Cristian, I think we talked extensively about that, is pushing the three priorities. Alejandro is about the pricing, the investments. It's about actually availability, making the product available to the customer, and accelerating e-commerce, and with that, I think we will continue gaining the trust and the preference from our customers.

Alejandro Fuchs
VP of Equity Research, Itaú BBA

Thank you very much.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Ben Theurer from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Ben Theurer
Managing Director, Barclays

Hey, good morning. Can you hear me?

Salvador Villaseñor
Head of Investor Relations, Walmart

Yes.

Hi, Ben.

Ben Theurer
Managing Director, Barclays

Okay, because I couldn't hear the operator, so I just want to make sure you got me. First of all, Cristian, thanks for taking time, even when you're in Costa Rica visiting stores. I wanted to follow up a little bit on kind of like Alejandro's question, but more broader in terms of the traffic versus ticket performance. And then at the same time, we've obviously seen a little bit of a weaker opening versus a year ago, particularly in Mexico. And I wanted to understand how you're thinking about the need or the opportunities to open stores if at the existing you have traffic pressure at some point to a certain degree.

I remember we got the announcement earlier this year during your Capital Markets Day about the commitment to open a lot of new stores over the next coming, I think it was five years until the end of the decade, so as we think about it, the need to open stores while at the same time we're seeing at the existing stores traffic decline with what you've seen over the last 90 days, and it might be early on, but do you think there is a need to potentially revisit what's out there in terms of openings just to avoid cannibalization, and how should we think about the pace of opening throughout the fourth quarter and ultimately those stores coming online that might be already under construction?

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yes, Ben, a very good question that you're putting on the table. So at the moment, we don't see any demand to review our ambition in terms of store openings. I think we've talked about 1,500 stores in the next five years. We still stick to that. Yeah, you already alluded to the fact that we didn't open probably as much as we were expecting in the Q3. And there was a little bit of slowdown in that openings, but we have a pipeline, a huge pipeline now for the Q4, a little bit like we tend to do it at the end of the year. But to go directly to your question, at the moment, we don't see necessarily a need to review the store openings in light of potential cannibalization.

As it relates to traffic and ticket, what we're seeing at the moment, maybe I'll hand over to Javier to just give you a little bit more details in terms of how we're seeing traffic and ticket and a little bit evolution of some of the categories.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah. Basically, Ben, regarding traffic, what we see is a reflection mainly of the customer backdrop that we're seeing in the retail. But we see a positive trend in the last quarters. And we feel very optimistic about Q4 and what's coming for us for seasonal. We've seen a lot of engagement of the consumers regarding seasonalities and everything that's about to come in Buen Fin and Fin Irresistible. And the other thing, even though we see inflation in some categories, we're also investing in price so we can give access to the consumers to better prices and help them save money and live better. So we want to grow even faster instead of just following inflation. And as I said, we're optimistic about what's coming for Q4.

Ben Theurer
Managing Director, Barclays

Okay, thank you very much.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

You're welcome.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Froylan Méndez from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Hi, Froylan. Are you there?

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yes, sure, Froylan. Yeah, go ahead.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Sorry, I cannot hear you, but I see that you can.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

You cannot hear us?

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Your mouth moving. Can you hear me?

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yes, we can.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

I guess I'll make the question, but I cannot hear your answer. I don't know why. Sorry about this. We had some improvement this quarter, but this is something that you mentioned that there's room to further increase. I would like to know what are the steps being taken and what was.

Salvador Villaseñor
Head of Investor Relations, Walmart

I think we need to move to the next one. Let's move to the next one. Sorry.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Froylan, we are moving to the next one. If you come back and we can hear us, we'll come back to you.

Moderator

Our next question is from Ms. Irma Sgarz from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Irma Sgarz
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question and welcome to the new appointments on the leadership team. I was excited to see the positions filled and good luck with your new responsibilities. Just two quick questions on the gross margin. I understand that the pressure that you posted in the third quarter came specifically also related to the inventory reductions that you're aiming for, so I was wondering if you could just point out if that was concentrated in specific categories or specific formats, if that was perhaps more sort of general merchandise related rather than sort of the consumable side and perhaps concentrated in certain formats and how you see that need to adjust your inventories going forward, or if that's sort of more concentrated and behind you from what your comments on the guidance for the fourth quarter sounds like it sounds like it's behind you?

And then the second question is just on the private label. I'm curious, just Cristian and Javier, maybe to hear your thoughts about where you feel sort of when you take an assessment of where you're doing well so far and what you still need to be doing on the private label side, especially given that, if I may say, it feels like consumer attitudes are changing towards private label in Mexico or have been changing over the last couple of years. And where do you feel you did call out general merchandise, I think you had in some categories higher penetration, but on the consumable side, I'm curious sort of how you're thinking about the strategy there. Thank you.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thanks, Irma. Thanks for your question, as usual. Spot on, by the way, on the first question and what you just said, spot on on all you said, so as you know, we've been talking about that. We wanted to address our inventories. You probably have seen the improvements that we've done in inventories almost three and a half days on hand, and we're still seeing opportunity going forward. In terms of what it relates to investments to, if you say, expedite some of these more unhealthy inventory that we have, I think it's probably most of it be behind us, and as you said, it's mostly in general merchandise, and because general merchandise tends to impact a little bit more a banner like Walmart, but at the end of the day, it tends to grow across all the banners.

I'll now pass on the second question to Javier on the private brands, and Cristian can always build.

Javier Andrade
CMO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah. Okay, so thank you for your question, Irma. As you said, I see a huge opportunity in private label now. Even though we're performing good and we increased 100 basis points this quarter in penetration, I see a big opportunity in terms of surety of supply that we're working with the global sourcing team, and we're also trying to leverage as much as we can from other markets. In groceries, consumables, and even fresh, we are improving our capacity to bring in products for the customers and give access to them to better qualities and best prices, and for us, private label is going to be important because it's a huge component of the EDLP approach that we have for the future in the company.

You will see more to come in terms of private label, but basically, we're going to make sure that we have the best assortment possible for each of our business formats and making sure that we cover all the needs that every customer has in our different businesses and also in our different channels. We're focusing on improving as much as we can all our processes. We will leverage as much as we can with global sourcing and other operations in Mexico. We are also working here with suppliers specifically to drive efficiencies that we can translate those efficiencies into better costs and better prices for the customer with local suppliers. Overall, private label is going to be important, and we're going to be speeding to develop our private brand to the maximum potential that we can.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Great. And if I may add, Irma, in the private label points, as you saw in the webcast, we just hired Prathibha from International to lead Sam's U.S., Sam's Mexico, sorry. And Prathibha has a ton of experience before managing private labels in the U.S. So we are seeing a tremendous opportunity to work together between China and the U.S. trying to improve our penetration in Member's Mark in Sam's also. So it's a complement that Javier mentioned before in self-service. So we are taking advantage of the global brand that we are and bringing talent to Mexico to help us or to work together in terms of the business as Sam's and also with some knowledge about private brands. So we're very confident for the future and the opportunity that we have to improve more our private brands program.

Irma Sgarz
Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Very clear. Thank you.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Ulises Argote from Santander. Please go ahead.

Ulises Argote
Executive Director, Santander

Hi guys. Thanks for the space for questions here and congrats, Cristian, and the recently appointed leadership team.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Ulises Argote
Executive Director, Santander

Actually, we have two. So the first one for Cristian, maybe we wanted to get your sense. Obviously, you were a long-term participant here in the Mexico market, then you went to Chile and now coming back. So I wanted to get your thoughts there. What are your kind of recent impressions on the current state of the market, any relevant change that you're seeing there in competitive dynamics, any relevant opportunities that might be worth tackling kind of on an initial basis? And then the second one for Paulo, maybe if we could just get a little bit more details on the one-off that you mentioned yesterday impacting the net income, any color that you could add there would be really helpful. Thank you.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you very much for your question, and as you mentioned, I moved in these seven countries in the last 14, 13, 14 years, and my first reaction, if I can compare both countries, it's incredible how similar the situation that we are looking today in Mexico are with the situation that I found in 2023 when I landed in Chile because both countries were growing 0%, and we saw in Chile and also here in Mexico the huge opportunity that we have to focus on the fundamentals with the idea when the, let me say, the economy will recover, we will take advantage of we will be better prepared to capitalize all the sales that we are looking for, and that's happened in Chile. We moved from 0% and the economy grew to 2% and the business there took advantage of that.

So we are looking at something similar here in Mexico, focusing on the things that we can control. And that is why we set very clear our priorities to go back, let me say, to these fundamentals as EDLP, availability, and of course, the e-comm acceleration that we have a huge opportunity both in Mexico and Central America. So we're very optimistic for the future and we're focused on these three priorities to take advantage in the next year.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Just on the second question, Ulises, so I already alluded to the fact that it's a non-recurrent item, so in a business of this size, once in a while, some of these topics pop up. I think also wanted to give a little bit more reassurance to the market in terms of what we expect going forward. Of it always to change in laws and regulations that we cannot control the effective tax rate, but actually we see that hovering more around the 25%, and I think that's probably what is meaningful at this stage for you guys.

Ulises Argote
Executive Director, Santander

All right. Thank you very much. Gracias.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Javier Andrade
CMO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you, Ulises.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Bob Ford from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Bob, are you there? Bob?

Moderator

Our next question is from Mr. Álvaro Garcia from BTG Pactual. Please go ahead.

Álvaro Garcia
Associate Partner, BTG Pactual

Hey, gentlemen. Nice to see you. Congrats, Cristian, on the new role. Hope you can hear me. Can you guys hear me?

Salvador Villaseñor
Head of Investor Relations, Walmart

We hear you. We don't see you, Álvaro, but you can ask the question. We don't, but we hear you.

Álvaro Garcia
Associate Partner, BTG Pactual

Perfect. There we go. Sorry, I'm in a coffee shop. So it's not the most professional, but why not? I noticed in the release that you mentioned that SG&A should sort of gravitate back to high single-digit growth in line with sales. And I found that a slight change relative to sort of the comments at Walmart today, which were you should expect SG&A to continue to grow above sales. So I was wondering if maybe you could expand on that comment. Was that specific to this coming fourth quarter or for the full year, medium term? Any color on that would be helpful.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Álvaro. So I think what we said is twofold. One is, as we said at the beginning of the year in terms of the guidance, we do expect to have for this year high single-digit growth in terms of SG&A, which is much different than what we have said in the past. And that means we continue to invest in the business. We also shed light on that topic, but also driving efficiencies. And actually these days also more mid-term efficiencies also fueled by AI. I think in terms of also what we said, it was that we do expect that SG&A to grow more closer to sales. That's our expectation, Álvaro. So that's also what we want to stick going forward.

Álvaro Garcia
Associate Partner, BTG Pactual

Great. And then just one, maybe it's for you, Paulo, could be for Cristian on gross margin. This is a business that over the last 10 years has seen a 300 basis point increase in gross margin, which by Walmart standards, I think is pretty darn high. So in the context of really doubling down on EDLP and really being true to that purpose, how do you feel about gross margin investment over the medium term?

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah, I'll say it and Cristian can immediately jump and chime in on that. You clearly see that. So we have been investing behind pricing and behind our customers to help them save money better, as we said it. We do want to continue to invest more. We want always to invest at the lowest prices in the market. As part of that investment, pricing brands, private brands penetration increase is also part of that and a more EDLP approach. Javier can allude to the fact that we can do that in a better way than we've done in the past. I think we want to have the right P&L shape, Álvaro. So of course, we want to invest behind our customers. It's also important to know, and you know it very well and a few others as well.

The shape of P&L is also somewhat changing as we have the new contributions from the new businesses. That is helping our gross margin. We have easily around always 20-30 basis points in our gross margin as a positive effect that we want to invest behind our customers, and to do that, we need, of course, continue to work on SG&A efficiencies to get it closer to sales, certainly cap it to high single digit. I think if we do that and we do sweat more investments we do in terms of gross margin, we will be putting more money in the pocket of our customers

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

And also, if I may add, Paulo, around ecosystem, ecosystem also is helping us to improve our profit, but we separate internally gross profit through commercial margin, and we have seen a more stable commercial margin.

And also, we are working on managing the approach in our tier one, tier two, tier three, connect with the EDLP approach. And we have seen, as Paulo mentioned, opportunities or better participation on margin in private brands and also better managing our tier three to improve maybe our mix in the total box. And that is why we are seeing a more stable margin. But we, as I mentioned before, we strongly believe in EDLP and we will be focused on EDLP, trying to maintain as stable as we can our flow of merchandising and connect with our purpose.

Álvaro Garcia
Associate Partner, BTG Pactual

Thank you very much.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Antonio Hernandez from Actinver. Please go ahead.

Antonio Hernandez
Head of Equity Research, Actinver

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on your results and the new appointments. Just wanted to follow up on Ulises' previous question regarding more than the macro environment, are you seeing anything more specifically on how consumer environment or the consumer's mindset has shifted or changed from your previous stay here in Mexico and Central America or more specifically in Mexico? Are you seeing any type of difference from back there to right now and maybe also in the competitive environment, competition? Thanks.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

To be very honest, only 90 days. My first reaction, I had the privilege to travel in these three years that I landed in Chile to Mexico. I see a more advanced or a more advanced market in terms of how open we are to take, let me say, some technologies and connect with the e-commerce side. That is why we put the e-commerce acceleration as a key priority. We are taking advantage of the brand that we are and bringing, as you saw in the webcast, One Hallway to provide to our customer a less friction experience, connecting on demand with 1P, with 3P. We are seeing a very good adoption for customers. If I may say something, it's going to be around technology.

I've seen my first 90 days customer more open to receive these kinds of technologies, open to give us, let me say, their cell phones and allow us to build this beneficial program. And with that, we can use the data and be more precise in terms of select the assortment, in terms of price elasticity. So I'm seeing a more advanced customer, let me say, and very open to receive these kinds of new technologies and reduce friction for them. Thank you.

Antonio Hernandez
Head of Equity Research, Actinver

Thanks, Jorge.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Antonio Hernandez.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Hi.

Moderator

From Ms. Renata Cabral from Citi. Please go ahead.

Renata Cabral
Analyst, Citigroup

Hi. Thank you so much for taking my question, and congrats, Cristian, for the new position.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Renata Cabral
Analyst, Citigroup

My question is about the One Hallway that the company delivered this quarter. So if you can give some color for us on the main milestones that you are seeing now in terms of store coverage or plugging more vendors from the U.S., for instance, in terms of overall opportunities. Of course, we always look at what Walmart U.S. did, but we understand that there are some differences in terms of the markets, maybe other opportunities as well. So if you can give us some color of what you see ahead for this One Hallway would be really helpful. Thank you so much.

Javier Andrade
CMO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah, thank you, Renata, for your question. I'm very excited about sharing some ideas and thoughts about One Hallway. Let me start by saying that we are focusing very strongly on demand first just to make sure that we are protecting our core with groceries, consumables, and fresh. And with One Hallway, we have now the opportunity to simplify the access and the experience for the customer where they will see all the opportunities in items and experiences in just one place in our digital platforms. And as you said, similarities between U.S. and Mexico are bigger than what we expected at the beginning. And basically, when we started the shift to One Hallway, we leveraged all the technology from the U.S., the search engine, and the technology. And what we're seeing now is interesting because we were expecting kind of a downside of the business during the transition.

And with all the learnings that we have from the U.S., we were able to have a better transition in Mexico. We're seeing more loyal customers to our platforms. We're seeing bigger baskets, if I may say. The customers are now purchasing groceries, consumables, and GM, not necessarily just from on demand, also from extended assortment. And we're working, and we recently shared inside the company that one of the core strategies is going to be cross-border. So Marketplace is going to have a huge acceleration in the upcoming weeks and months. So what I can say is that we feel very confident that we're going to be leading the omnichannel experience for the customer, for every customer in Mexico. And we will give them access to the digital economy also through the ecosystem.

So we are closing the loop, and we are going to be expecting growth and sustainable growth for the future with One Hallway.

Renata Cabral
Analyst, Citigroup

Super good. Just a quick follow-up. For us, it's clear the potential for top-line growth for 2026. In terms of margins, do you think that in 2026 that will be also aggressive or that will take some time?

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Do you refer to the margins here in e-commerce and in Marketplace, Renata?

Renata Cabral
Analyst, Citigroup

Yes.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

So I've always alluded to the fact, you guys know it, that if you think about our on-demand business, it's a profitable business already. We always said that our extended assortment business of 1P and 3P in a different stage is pretty much a business of critical mass. So critical mass here is important. So we are on that journey. So we actually see a lot of value creation can be created in the future as we go through that journey in improving the volumes that we pass through the 1P and in particular Marketplace.

Renata Cabral
Analyst, Citigroup

Thank you.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Andrew Ruben from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Andrew Ruben
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Hi. Thank you so much for the question. Just one quick follow-up on the e-commerce side. For Marketplace, we saw the seller base grew 30%, but there was a 30% decrease in SKU, so just trying to understand the strategy and what drove the divergence, and then just a second item, there was a quick mention of tariffs within the release or the conference call, so I just wanted to clarify, is that more of a general statement on macro uncertainty, or are there specific ways that the tariff backdrop has been impacting business? Thank you.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah, if I can just start on the second one. I think it's more just a general statement, Andrew, the way you put it. I think we're just seeing that both a little bit the uncertainty around tariffs, but also a little bit the uncertainty around the USMCA agreement. What it does at the moment is just it's hampering a little bit investment in Mexico or the big investment. So that ultimately hampering the investment leads to less job creation that you used to do it in the past. I think that creates a bit of uncertainty and therefore impacts the consumption. I think that's the statement. I think if we think about tariffs as such and direct impact to our business, we're not seeing necessarily a meaningful impact of tariffs in our business. To the first question.

Javier Andrade
CMO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah. And basically to your question about SKUs and sellers, it was temporary because of the transition we were doing in technology, but we expect to recover very fast in terms of SKUs and sellers. And we're working closely with the U.S. to expedite this. So we know that it's important for us to have the right value proposition in every category. So it was just temporary. Thank you, Andrew.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Froylan Méndez from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yes.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yes.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Perfect.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

I hear you now. Yes.

Sorry about that. I want to ask. I'm sorry if they already asked. I couldn't hear most of the call, but on working capital, we saw an improvement this specific quarter. Can you give us some color on what changed and what are your expectations in the mid and long term on your working capital cycle? I guess it's for an additional improvement, but more color on how sustainable is this quarterly improvement, if it had more to do with your pricing strategy, or just the temporary and the type of SKUs that were sold during the quarter, what are different from the previous ones? More color on that would be highly appreciated.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Hi, Froylan. Thank you for the question, so we've alluded in the past quarters that we were actually attacking our working capital. We are not necessarily entirely happy with the performance that we had on inventory days. You have seen that quarter two was already a better performance than the previous quarters, and this quarter, in particular, a significant reduction, three and a half days versus where we were a year ago. I think you can expect us to continue to tackle inventory, continue to improve. I think ultimately, if we have less inventory in the store, it leads to more productivity. If it leads to more productivity, it leads to money that we have at hand to be able to invest behind prices and therefore put the spinning wheel to work and therefore to get more growth.

You should expect that to continue to happen consistently in the coming months and not just necessarily one-off. You do also there were concerns also in the past, Froylan, about our DPO and the fact that was increasing. That has to do, of course, we had to reduce purchases in the past to address inventory. Now gets to a more stable level. If you remember, I said that in the prior quarter, and I think that's what you can expect going forward.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Excellent. And if I may just, on your comments on what to expect into the fourth quarter, you said that between the second and third quarter, does that mean you are reiterating your top-line guidance into the year? And when you say that SG&A should grow in the same level as top-line, should we not expect then any EBITDA margin expansion, but let's say a stable gross margin for this year?

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

I said three things for the quarter, Froylan, and just to allude to the things we said. One, we did set one thing on guidance for the Q4 on growth, indeed. And we expect growth to be along the lines of what we saw in Q2 and Q3. And if that's true, then you can do the math versus what we previously had said overall for the full year. I think we are focusing on what we can control and what we have the line of sight. We have line of sight, as Javier was alluding to, for the peak season, and we expect along the lines of what we did in Q2 and in Q3. On SG&A, as you've seen in this quarter, we grew only around 5%. As you know, there will be phasing. Sometimes you invest more, sometimes you invest less, you create more efficiencies.

But we stick to our objective to continue delivering the high single-digit growth. And when you think more in the mid and the long term, we definitely want to see SG&A more in line with sales in order to deliver the near-term stabilization of the margins that we promised. That's the second. And the third one that we said for the, I said it for this particular quarter, Q4, is that we expect a sequential improvement in terms of profit delivery. We always said that Q3 was going to be better than H1, and it was. And we expect a Q4 that will be better than Q3.

Froylan Mendez
Executive Director, JPMorgan

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Thank you. You are welcome, Froylan.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. Our next question is from Mr. Bob Ford from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Bob Ford
Senior Analyst, Bank of America

Hey, good morning, everybody, and congratulations on the new role, Cristian. I was curious how you're thinking about evolving trends in small-box retail in Mexico, maybe historically why Walmart has not really leaned into proximity in the past, and how we should think about Express or other proximity formats moving forward. And then also in the footnotes of the results for the last couple of quarters, there's been a note about transfer pricing and tax risk, and I was just hoping you could expand upon that, particularly in the context of this little hiccup on tax expense. Thank you.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yes. So first, if you're on the proximity one. Okay.

Paulo Garcia
CFO, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

Yeah. So let me start with the second question, then Cristian can talk a little bit more about those things about proximity risks, and I can build on that. So Bob, so this is what we saw in the quarter. It's just a one-off that we saw it. It doesn't relate with the footnotes that you're alluding to in terms of the transfer pricing risk or anything that will be linked to that, Bob.

Cristian Barrientos Pozo
CEO and President, Walmart de México y Centroamérica

I mean, typical proximity, if I may answer your question, we changed brands three or four years ago, and personally, I truly believe that we have a huge opportunity to continue to expand our business in supermarket business. We have a ton of experience here in Central America. We have more than 100 stores here. We have almost 100 stores in Mexico also, but with a different size, so in a middle class that is very big in Mexico, we are seeing a lot of white spaces. That is why we changed the brand. We have a strong, or let me say, a better presence in Mexico City, but we have a huge opportunity to grow this supermarket business in regions in Mexico.

We recently opened two stores with very good performance, and we have planned to continue to open this one because we have seen a lot of white spaces in the region, so we're very confident with this kind of stores or business because of the experience that we have in Walmart. Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you very much for your question. That was the last question. I will now hand over to Mr. Salvador Villaseñor for final comments.

Salvador Villaseñor
Head of Investor Relations, Walmart

Thank you very much. We would just like to thank everyone for joining us once again and looking forward to our fourth quarter results and talking to you soon.

Moderator

Walmart would like to thank you for participating in today's video conference. You may now disconnect.

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