Controlling real estate is important for Publix Super Markets and now, Walmart

With the third full shopping center acquisition this year — a shopping center in Norwalk, Conn. — Walmart Inc. seems to have recently discovered what Publix Super Markets has known for many years: that controlling their real estate, creating the optimum tenant mix and collecting rents from tenants is good business with the added advantage of asset appreciation that comes with owning commercial real estate.

Thus far, Walmart’s acquisitions this year appear to be very selective. If Walmart wants to move full throttle into commercial real estate ownership, we would see the company acquiring a national shopping center company along with its underlying real estate assets and the management company to help manage the business. Is that a possibility? Maybe and maybe not.

Walmart keeps nearly $9.4 billion in cash equivalent on hand and could acquire real estate on a massive scale if its board felt this is a way to diversify and grow its holdings. But so far, Walmart’s priorities for investing cash have just included spending on automation, its supply chain, artificial intelligence and technology, improving its Sam’s Club warehouses and remodeling Walmart stores in the United States and abroad.

Time will tell the extent of Walmart’s appetite for being a landlord to other retailers.

Read more: Walmart buys latest shopping center as US chains push to own their stores (CoStar News)