Walmart (WMT) Q4 2026 earnings

Walmart It said Thursday that holiday quarter sales rose nearly 6% and its quarterly profit and revenue topped Wall Street expectations as gains in e-commerce, advertising and third-party marketplaces boosted its business.

For the current full fiscal year, Walmart said it expects net sales to increase 3.5% to 4.5% and adjusted earnings per share to range from $2.75 to $2.85. Earnings forecasts fell short of Wall Street’s forecast of $2.96 per share, according to LSEG.

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer John David Rennie said quick deliveries from stores help Walmart attract more shoppers, especially those with higher incomes.

“Our ability to serve customers at the volume that we have, combined with the speed that we have now, actually translates into continued gains in market share,” he said.

The company’s market share gains across all incomes, but were largest among higher-income households, Rennie said. For example, for fashion, a category that grew at a moderate rate in the fourth quarter, almost all of the increase came from households with annual incomes over $100,000.

In the coming months, Rennie said he expects price increases due to inflation and an easing of tariff increases imposed by President Donald Trump. Walmart’s food inflation in the fourth quarter was just above 1%, while it was slightly higher for general merchandise, he said.

“The price environment seems to be fairly normal,” he said. “I think we, by and large as a retail industry, have absorbed or seen the brunt of the impact of the tariffs.”

While this comment is welcome news to many American shoppers who buy from the nation’s largest grocery store, it may be too early to say what pricing trends at the retailer mean for the rest of the economy. Although Walmart is seen as a key barometer for the broader retail industry, it has traditionally had greater ability than its competitors to keep prices low in part because of its size.

Here’s what the big box retailer reported for its fiscal fourth quarter compared to Wall Street estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• EPS: 74 cents were revised versus 73 cents expected
• profit: $190.66 billion compared to $190.43 billion expected

Walmart shares fluctuated in choppy premarket trading early Thursday.

However, as of Wednesday’s close, the company’s shares were up about 22% over the past year and about 14% so far this year. This exceeds the S&P 500’s gain of 12% over the past year and less than 1% year to date.

Walmart’s results on Thursday also show an inflection point in the industry. for the first time, Amazon Walmart topped the list as the largest retailer by annual revenue, with the company recording sales of $716.9 billion in its most recent fiscal year compared to Walmart’s $713.2 billion.

It is not possible to make an accurate comparison between the two companies, as Amazon obtains a large portion of its revenue from cloud computing and other technical services. However, it highlights the competition between competitors, especially as Walmart follows a similar playbook by increasing revenue streams outside of traditional retail, such as advertising and its marketplaces.

In the three-month period ended Jan. 31, Walmart’s net income fell to $4.24 billion, or 53 cents per share, compared to $5.25 billion, or 65 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Excluding one-time items such as investment gains and losses, legal settlements and business reorganizations, Walmart’s adjusted earnings per share were 74 cents.

Revenues increased from $180.55 billion in the same quarter last year.

Comparable sales jumped 4.6% for Walmart’s U.S. business and 4% for Sam’s Club in the fourth quarter, excluding fuel, compared with the same period a year ago. The industry metric, also called same-store sales, includes sales from stores and clubs open at least a year.

Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce sales rose 27% year-over-year, boosted by in-store pickup and online delivery of orders, along with the retailer’s third-party marketplace. This marks the 15th consecutive quarter in which the company has posted double-digit digital gains. Global e-commerce sales rose 24% year over year.

For the company’s U.S. business, e-commerce accounted for 23% of sales — a record for Walmart. The company said digital growth in the quarter included a roughly 50% increase in deliveries made in-store and a roughly 41% increase in sales from Walmart Connect, its advertising business.

While Walmart is gaining more ground, its growth is not evenly distributed across income groups.

In an interview with CNBC, Rennie said the company “sees some pressure on the lowest income group.” Walmart tracks spending trends on an annual basis by income group, he said. As in the previous quarter, he said he saw spending among higher earners compared to lower income groups “decline a little bit.”

The trend he described reflects what some economists have called a “K-shaped economy.”

Walmart’s quarterly report was the first of its kind under its new CEO, John Forner. Forner, Walmart’s former U.S. CEO who worked at the company for more than three decades, succeeded Doug McMillon as Walmart’s CEO on February 1.

Investors largely expect Furner to focus on similar priorities as his predecessor McMillon, such as growing Walmart’s online business, attracting more customers via revenue, and strengthening high-margin businesses such as third-party marketplace and advertising.

Besides hiring a new CEO, Walmart has had other accomplishments recently. Its shares switched to the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange in December and reached a market value of $1 trillion earlier this month.

Along with its results on Thursday, Walmart also announced a new $30 billion stock buyback authorization, replacing a $20 billion buyback program approved in 2022.