Walmart stock earnings send WMT to all-time high

• Walmart beat top and bottom line consensus for Q3 on Tuesday.
• WMT rose 3% on the day to close at $86.60 after raising full-year guidance.
• Walmart stock reached a new all-time high of $88.29 on Tuesday.
• eCommerce sales and advertising have helped the retailer continue to grow.

Walmart (WMT), the world’s largest box store retailer by revenue, closed up 3% on Tuesday after releasing third-quarter earnings that came in above consensus. The box store megolith also raised full-year guidance, which pushed its share price to a new all-time high.

The Dow Jones slumped -0.3%, underperforming the NASDAQ for the second day in a row with the latter gaining 1%.

Walmart stock news

Walmart earned $0.58 in adjusted earnings per share (EPS) on revenue of $169.6 billion in Q3. This was 5 cents higher than consensus on Wall Street and nearly $3 billion higher on the sales front. 

Comparable Walmart store sales grew more than 5% YoY in the quarter, while international comparables grew above 12% YoY.

Despite the quarter featuring a US port strike, two hurricanes and the presidential election, CEO Doug McMillon said that eCommerce, advertising and memberships all saw annual growth above 20%.

“Households earning more than $100,000 made up 75% of our share gains. In the US, in-store volumes grew, curbside pickup grew faster, and delivery sales grew even faster than that,” McMillon said.

We are raising our full year guidance to reflect strong third quarter results. On a constant currency basis, we now expect full year sales growth of 4.8% to 5.1%, and operating income growth of 8.5% to 9.25% versus prior guidance of growth of 3.75% to 4.75% and 6.5% to 8%, respectively.

Walmart management now expects adjusted EPS to arrive between $2.42 and $2.47 for the full year compared with prior guidance of $2.35 to $2.43. 

“This full-year guidance implies fourth-quarter constant currency growth in sales of around 3% to 4% and operating income around 5% to 7.5%,” said McMillon on the earnings call. “This guidance is slightly above our prior implied Q4 range.”

Walmart stock forecast

Walmart share reached an intraday high of $88.29, which is now a new all-time as well. WMT stock is up nearly 67% year to date, and Tuesday's performance shows it may end the year higher.

Right now the daily chart shows WMT just gracing the overbought range on the Relative Strength Index (RSI), so this may be an inopportune time for entry however.

WMT daily stock chart