Walmart Shares Slump on Weakest Sales Growth in Over Six Years

Walmart WMT -9.61%decrease; red down pointing triangle reported its smallest sales gain in more than six years as some Americans continue to spend cautiously—especially when shopping at the retailer’s physical stores.

On Thursday, Walmart said U.S. comparable sales, those from store and digital channels operating for the past 12 months, rose 2.6%. That is the smallest quarterly increase the retailer has reported since 2020. The number was hurt by new pharmacy-pricing regulations, without which Walmart would have had a 3.4% lift, the company said. That is below analysts’ estimates of a 3.8% gain, according to FactSet.

Walmart’s stock fell 9% to $104 in morning trading Thursday, the worst performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Walmart’s slower growth came as some consumers continue to watch their wallets amid higher gas prices and the company navigates a shift to sales growth driven by new channels—increasingly e-commerce, membership and advertising sales, not its core big-box base. It is a marked transition for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer that still earns the bulk of its sales and profits from sprawling supercenters.

Much of the growth came from a 24% increase in U.S. e-commerce sales, a figure that includes Walmart’s increasingly prominent advertising-revenue business. Walmart sells ads that run in its digital channels and stores.

In-stores comparable sales, meanwhile, declined in the “low single digits,” following a trend of the previous two quarters, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said on a conference call Thursday. Many pharmacy purchases are made in stores, so the weakness of that business had an impact, he said.

But, more broadly, “the relevance of store comps, I think, is not as pertinent as it was a decade ago,” said Rainey in a separate interview. For example, items ordered online and picked up in store parking lots are counted as e-commerce sales, he said, so increasingly stores are a digital-fulfillment node that enable speedy delivery. “It’s a legacy fixation,” he said. “We are not the Walmart of a decade ago.”

Top executives are discussing if they should report those store-fulfilled sales differently to better reflect Walmart’s current business model, he said. E-commerce accounts for nearly a quarter of overall sales, and 80% of those orders are fulfilled from its stores.

The online and offline channels “are blurring, but slowdown in in-store comps is going to be important to watch,” said Spencer Hanus, retail analyst at Wolfe Research. Overall Walmart’s quarterly results are solid, even with slightly weaker sales, he said, but that weakness means “results will be more scrutinized going forward.”

Sales of groceries, toys, fashion and private brands were strong in the most recent quarter, and Walmart said it is gaining market share broadly, but especially among higher-income households, a term the retailer uses to describe households that earn $100,000 a year or above. Lower-income shoppers continue to spend cautiously, but they are spending, said Rainey. “It appears there were choices between necessities within the quarter because of where gas prices are,” he said.

Walmart also lowered some prices in the quarter, using some of the windfall of its $2.9 billion in tariff refunds. Prices during the quarter were still slightly higher than the same period last year due to overall cost increases, said Rainey, but the company put in place additional price cuts near the end of the period and is giving priority to price investments on items that have been particularly affected, such as beef. Walmart is “muting what was otherwise a higher price increase where consumers were feeling pressure,” he said.

The quarterly sales lift was enough for Walmart to raise its net sales and operating-income estimates for the full year. It now expects net sales to increase 4% to 5% for the full year, up from a previous estimate of 3.5% to 4.5%. Operating income will rise 7% to 8.5% for the full year, up from a 6% to 8% range set earlier this year, the company said.

Walmart’s latest results add to a string of mixed quarterly-sales reports from retailers in recent days. Target said its quarterly comparable sales rose 3.8%, reversing last year’s declines. TJX, which owns chains such as T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, said that its comparable sales rose 4% in the most recent quarter, but that its flagship U.S. store sales grew just 1% after it made some apparel missteps. Home-improvement retailer Home Depot said its comparable sales rose 1.7%, while competitor Lowe’s reported sluggish 0.2% growth.

July government retail-sales data showed a softening overall, though some of that softness was likely caused by one-time events like the switch of Amazon.com and other retailers’ summer online-sales events to June.

So far Walmart’s back-to-school shopping season is going well, said executives on the conference call. Though it’s early days because much of the country goes back to school a week later than last year—the second week of September—sales have been strong for college-related purchases that tend to start earlier, said Walmart Chief Executive John Furner.

Walmart sells around 50% of all school supplies in the U.S. by volume, said Walmart U.S. CEO David Guggina, and so far shoppers are responding well to trendy items and well-priced items. The company worked to lower prices compared with last year on key items such as crayons and pencils, he said.

Walmart’s net sales rose 5.9% to $186.1 billion in the most recent quarter ended July 31. Net income fell 9.4% to $6.37 billion as the decline of some equity investments ate into profits.