Walmart Stock Climbs 3% Following Retail Juggernaut’s Beat-And-Raise Q3: Retail Rave Over Another Stellar Quarterly Performance

Walmart, Inc. ($WMT) shares jumped over 4% on Tuesday following another beat-and-raise quarter from the retail giant. 

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart’s quarterly adjusted earnings per share (EPS), excluding a $0.01 loss on equity and other investments, came in at $0.58, surpassing the consensus estimate of $0.53 and the year-ago’s $0.51.

Consolidated revenue climbed 5.5% year-on-year (YoY) to $169.6 billion compared to the average analysts’ estimate of $167.69 billion. 

Geographic break-down of revenue shows roughly 68% contribution by Walmart U.S., 18% by international operations and 14% by Sam’s Club U.S.

Among the other operational metrics, Walmart U.S. same-store sales, excluding fuel, rose from 4.9% to 5.3%, with e-commerce contributing 290 basis points (bps) to comps, down from 300 bps a year ago.

Sam’s Club U.S. comps, excluding fuel, jumped from 3.8% to 7.0%, with food and health & wellness categories among the best performers.

The retail giant said that its global e-commerce sales climbed 27%, thanks to strong store-fulfilled pickup & delivery and market place, and global advertising grew 28%.

Global inventory fell 1%, with the U.S. seeing a more modest 0.6% drop.

Gross profit expanded 21 bps YoY to 24.2%.

President and CEO Doug McMillon said, "We had a strong quarter, continuing our momentum."

"In the U.S., in-store volume grew, pickup from store grew faster and delivery from store grew even faster than that," he added.

Walmart ended the quarter with cash and cash-equivalents of $10 billion.

Looking ahead, the company raised its fiscal year 2025 constant currency net sales growth guidance from 3.75%-4.75% to 4.8%-5.1%. 

The adjusted EPS guidance was hiked from $2.35-$2.43 to $2.42-$2.47.

Analysts, on average, expect net sales growth of 4.98% and adjusted EPS of $2.45, according to Yahoo Finance. 

The stock has rallied about 62% so far this year.

WMT sentiment and message volume November 19, 2024, as of 10:40 am ET | Source: Stocktwits

On Stocktwits, retail mood toward the stock was ‘extremely bullish’, an improvement from ‘neutral’ a day ago, accompanied by an uptick in message volume to ‘extremely high’.

A user on Stocktwits lauded the company for the double-beat and said the stock would trade at over $100 by next earnings.

The holiday season is off to a strong start, said another.