Amazon has dethroned Walmart as the company with the largest annual revenue. The shuffle, while largely symbolic, underscores the retail rivalry between the companies, particularly as Walmart riffs off Amazon's playbook by chasing alternate revenue streams like advertising.
Walmart has been steadily gaining share from high-earning households over the past year. Shoppers of all income brackets are drawn to the retailer's low prices and growing convenience.
WMT beats Q4 estimates as e-commerce jumps 24% and advertising revenues surge 37% amid strong digital momentum.
The headline numbers for Walmart (WMT) give insight into how the company performed in the quarter ended January 2026, but it may be worthwhile to compare some of its key metrics to Wall Street estimates and the year-ago actuals.
Stock futures are slightly lower this morning after three straight days of gains for the benchmark S&P 500; Walmart stock is losing ground after the retail giant issued an outlook that came in short of Wall Street expectations; OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise a new funding round of up to $100 billion from the likes of Nvidia, Microsoft and others; Carvana shares are tumbling after some of the used car seller's profit metrics missed analysts' estimates; and DoorDash stock is surging after the food delivery app operator forecast higher-than-anticipated order value growth. Here's what you need to know today.
Walmart (WMT) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.74 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.73 per share. This compares to earnings of $0.66 per share a year ago.
Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day.
Walmart Inc (NYSE:WMT, XETRA:WMT) shares fell more than 3% in premarket trading on Thursday after the world's largest retailer issued a cautious annual outlook that disappointed Wall Street, despite posting solid fourth-quarter results in new chief executive John Furner's first earnings report. Revenue for the final three months of 2025 rose 5.6% year on year to $190.7 billion, while operating income grew 10.8%, outpacing sales growth, and global e-commerce jumped 24% to reach a record share of US sales.
Walmart posted 5.6% revenue growth in the fourth quarter, led by higher transactions, cooling grocery inflation and record digital penetration.
Retail earnings growth cools, but DG, WMT, HD and DLTR stand out with positive Earnings ESPs ahead of holiday-quarter results.
The consumer staples sector exists because people need to eat, clean, and maintain routines regardless of what the economy does.
Walmart and Target both have new CEOs, but those leaders find themselves in distinctly different positions. At Walmart, CEO John Furner's job is "to keep the ship steady," and at Target, CEO Michael Fiddelke has to "sell the Target of the future," said Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at GlobalData.