NEW YORK — Walmart delivered another year of strong sales and profits with its competitive prices an increasingly strong magnet for inflation-weary shoppers, but this year appears to come with new challenges.
The outlook from the nation’s largest retailer for 2025 is as much as 27 cents below analyst projections for per-share earnings and for the quarter, Walmart’s expectations are as much as 7 cents below Wall Street projections.
Its sales outlook is also disappointing, potentially a reflection of rising challenges ahead as consumers pull back on spending and President Donald Trump’s and threaten the low-price model that is the core of Walmart’s success.
Shares tumbled 7%.
Walmart is among the first major U.S. retailers to report quarterly financial results and numbers could provide a hint as to the mood of the American shopper, particularly amid new trade barriers that according to most economists threaten to reignite inflation. Consumers over the past year have increasingly focused more on necessities rather than TVs, furniture or appliances. They’ve become much more discerning about big-ticket purchases because of higher costs for credit as well as for groceries.
if Americans are hit by a new wave of price increases, economists say, and with 70% of the U.S. economy driven by consumers a broad pullback in spending would have ramifications beyond Walmart’s sales.
Government data last week revealed a as cold weather kept more Americans indoors. But it was a much bigger drop than economists expected and the biggest in a year. Sales were revised higher for December, possibly indicating a pullback by consumers after a holiday season splurge.
Yet grocery prices, a sore point for American households, continued to rise.
Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, reported earnings of $5.25 billion, or 65 cents per share, in the quarter ended Jan. 31. That compares with $5.49 billion, or 68 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings per share for the most recent quarter was 66 cents.
Sales rose 4.1% to $180.55 billion in the quarter.
Analysts expected 65 cents per share on sales of $180.07 billion in the fourth quarter, according to FactSet.
For Walmart’s U.S. division, comparable store sales — which include online and stores open for the past 12 months — rose 4.6% in the U.S., a bit lower than the 5.3% in the previous quarter. The retailer had a 4.2% jump in the U.S. in the second quarter and 3.8% in the first quarter.
Global e-commerce sales rose 16% in the latest quarter.
For the fiscal first quarter, Walmart expects earnings per share to be in the range of 57 cents to 58 cents. That’s well below the 64 cents that FactSet analysts were expecting. It also expects 3% to 4% increase in sales for that time period, bringing the total to $166.35 billion to $167.97 billion.
Analysts forecast sales of $167.05 billion for the fiscal first quarter, according to FactSet.
For the year. Walmart expects earnings per share in the range of $2.50 to $2.60. That’s lower than the $2.77 that analysts are predicting, according to FactSet.
Walmart expects sales to be up anywhere between 3% to 4% for the current year. That would bring the total to $667.57 billion to $674.05 billion. That’s below the $708.72 billion that analysts predicted, according to FactSet.
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