A woman shops at a Walmart Supercenter store in Rosemead, California.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images
Walmart is set to report quarterly earnings before the bell on Thursday.
Here’s what analysts are expecting, based on Refinitiv data:
- Earnings per share: $1.09
- Revenue: $128.65 billion
- Same-store sales: up 3.1%
Ahead of the holiday season, with a shorter calendar to shop this year, Walmart said it kicked off deals “earlier than ever” in October. It hopes an earlier burst of momentum will help it steal some dollars from rivals Amazon and Target.
It looks to be in a good position ahead of the holidays, too. A recent survey from First Insight showed Walmart was gaining shoppers, as traffic dipped at Amazon. Another blow to Amazon was Nike confirming this week it will no longer sell its merchandise to the company, ending a pilot that dates back to 2017. Nike still sells some products on Walmart’s Jet.com.
All year long, Walmart and Amazon have been neck and neck in a delivery war, trying to offer shoppers as speedy a service as possible.
Amazon announced plans in October to start delivering grocery products for free within a two-hour window to all Prime members living in the 2,000 regions eligible for the service. Until then, Prime members had to pay an additional $14.99 per month to get access to Amazon Fresh, a separate program that offered two-hour grocery delivery.
Walmart has started testing delivering groceries directly to customers’ refrigerators in three cities. Its InHome grocery delivery membership program costs $19.95 a month. And making the most of its bricks-and-mortar stores, it has more than 2,700 grocery pickup locations for online orders across the U.S. Walmart also now offers a “Delivery Unlimited” option from 1,400 locations, where customers can pay $98 annually, or $12.95 monthly, for unlimited grocery delivery.
Last quarter, Walmart’s online sales surged 37%, helped by a strong grocery business. The company has been calling for U.S. e-commerce sales growth of 35% for the year, which would be slightly less than what it logged in fiscal 2019.
Walmart shares are up nearly 30% this year. The retailer has a market cap of about $344.2 billion, compared with Amazon’s $867 billion.
