A Comparison of Financial Statements: Woolworths Group vs Walmart

Running head: A COMPARISION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF
WOOLWORTHS GROUP (AUSTRALIA) AND WALMART (US)
A COMPARISION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF WOOLWORTHS GROUP
(AUSTRALIA) AND WALMART (US)
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Author Note

1
A COMPARISION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF WOOLWORTHS GROUP
(AUSTRALIA) AND WALMART (US)
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Woolworths Group.................................................................................................................2
Walmart Inc............................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Differences in both company’s financial report.....................................................................3
Similarity in both company’s financial report.......................................................................5
Method used for depreciation.................................................................................................5
Method used for inventory.....................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7
Appendix....................................................................................................................................8

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A COMPARISION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF WOOLWORTHS GROUP
(AUSTRALIA) AND WALMART (US)
Introduction
This report is prepared to compare the financial statement of Woolworths Group and
Walmart Inc. The paper focuses to highlight the similarity and differences in the financial
report of both the company. Along with that the report analyse the methods, rules and
accounting standards used by both the company to report their financial and accounting
information.
Woolworths Group
The Woolworths group limited is an Australia based retail company. This is
Australia’s second largest company by revenue, also the second largest company of New
Zealand. The company have the extensive retail chain across the Australia and New Zealand
along with the largest take away liquor retail in Australia and largest hotel and poker machine
operator of Australia (Woolworths, 2019). Woolworths also entered in the petrol market with
the Plus Petrol. The company also owns the 75% stakes of the Australian Leisure &
Hospitality Group. Its five founders establish the first outlet of the company in 1924. This
paper, considers the annual report of the company for the year 2018 to perform the rest of
analysis.
Walmart Inc.
Walmart Inc. is an American company having headquarter in Bentonville, Arkansas,
U.S. This multinational company operates an intensive chain of hypermarkets, departmental
stores and grocery stores. Mr Sam Walton founded the Walmart Inc. in 1962 and
incorporated in 1969. The company has more than 11,000 store in more than 27 countries
under more than 55 different names (Walmart, 2019). This is world’s largest company by
revenue as well as the world’s largest private employer with more than 2.2 million

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A COMPARISION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF WOOLWORTHS GROUP
(AUSTRALIA) AND WALMART (US)
employees. The company also owns the club retail warehouses of Mr Sam. It is family owned
publicly traded business as the Walton family controls the company.
Discussion
Differences in both company’s financial report
After analysing the financial report 2018 of both the company the following
difference are identified between the annual financial report of both companies:-
 Basis of consolidation: - The Consolidation financial report of Woolworths
incorporate the asset, liabilities and all subsidiaries as the June 2018 (S2.q4cdn.com,
2019). In other hand, the Walmart only consider those subsidiaries, which are more
than 50% owned by the company and fulfils the requirements of consolidation. The
Walmart does not consider its all subsidiaries in their consolidation report; hence, the
company does not reveal the information of all the subsidiaries in their financial
report. However, the Woolworths consider all their subsidiaries in their annual report,
hence, the information regarding all the subsidiaries of the company is enough to
gather financial information of all the subsidiaries of the Woolworths.
 Principles of preparation: - The consolidated financial reporting prepared by the
Walmart is based on the generally accepted accounting principles, while, the financial
report of Woolworth is based on the Australian Accounting Standards with the
International Financial Reporting Standards issued by the IASB (Woolworthsgroup,
2019). As Walmart is an American company, the company follow and prepare its
financial report based on the American standards. On other hand, the Woolworths Ltd
is based on the Australia hence this follows the Australian Accounting Stands along
with the Internally accepted accounting policies to report its financial information.