Walmart has successfully transformed from a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer into a technology-powered omnichannel retail leader. This transformation is evident in continued impressive digital commerce growth.
Meantime, the company’s strategic investments in its digital infrastructure, supply chain capabilities, and omnichannel integration are creating sustainable competitive advantages that will drive long-term shareholder value.
What’s more, the firm’s well-known value proposition has become increasingly attractive to consumers across multiple income levels. This broadening customer base, combined with expanding high-margin businesses like advertising and financial services, provides multiple avenues for future growth.
This has fueled increasing dividends, including a recent 13.3% raise to $0.94 per share – its largest increase in over a decade. All these prospects make it a buy despite the stock’s high but reasonable 37.2 times P/E—given its growth prospects.
WALMART INC. (New York symbol WMT; www.walmart.com) is the world’s largest retailer, with 10,771 outlets in 19 countries.
Walmart’s U.S. operations supplied 69% of total sales in the latest fiscal year, followed by international stores (18%) and the Sam’s Club warehouse stores (13%)
In August 2024, the company sold its 9.4% stake in Chinese e-commerce retailer JD.com for $3.6 billion. The cash helped fund its $1.9 billion acquisition of Vizio Holding Corp. (New York symbol VZIO). That firm makes TV sets and soundbars.
Walmart is mainly interested in Vizio’s SmartCast Operating System, which streams ad-supported content on its devices to 19 million subscribers.
Studying the viewing and purchasing habits of those users will help Walmart create ads that better appeal to those users and prompt more purchases. Improving the effectiveness of these ads will also help draw more advertisers to this system.
The company also continues to expand its e-commerce operations, which benefit from its large network of stores and fulfillment centres. It can now deliver packages to 93% of U.S. households on the same day and aims to expand that to 95% by the end of 2025. Greater use of social media platforms is also helping Walmart’s e-commerce business attract more third-party sellers.
Another area of growth is the company’s Sam Club chain of 600 warehouse stores in the U.S. It plans to open 15 new stores annually over the next few years. That will help it tap into growing traffic at these stores by younger shoppers. In fact, Gen Z and millennials account more than 50% of the chain’s membership growth.
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Walmart Inc.'s 52-year dividend streak continues
In the fiscal 2026 first quarter, ended April 30, 2025, sales rose 2.5%, to $165.61 billion from $161.51 billion a year earlier. That missed the consensus forecast of $165.84 billion.
Thanks to stronger demand for groceries, health and beauty products, and seasonal goods, Walmart’s U.S. same-store sales (including online) rose 4.5%. That was due to a higher number of transactions (up 1.6%) and higher spending per transaction (up 2.8%). As well, global online sales improved 22% while advertising revenue jumped 50% following the recent acquisition of TV-set maker Vizio and its advertising platform.
If you factor out gains and losses on investments and other unusual items, earnings per share rose 1.7%, to $0.61 from $0.60. That topped the consensus estimate of $0.58 a share.
In fiscal 2026, Walmart sales (excluding exchange rates) will probably rise 4%. Earnings should also improve 4% to $2.62 a share, and the stock trades at 37.2 times that forecast. That’s a high but acceptable multiple considering the company’s sizable market share and ability to manage costs.
As well, with the April 2025, payment, Walmart raised your quarterly dividend by 13.3%. Investors now receive $0.235 a share instead of $0.2075. The new annual rate of $0.94 yields 1.0%. The company has raised its annual dividend rate each year for the past 52 years.
Recommendation in Wall Street Stock Forecaster: Walmart Inc. is a buy.
