Walmart Inc (NYSE: WMT) gave the market enough ammo to shoot first and read later. WMT’s U.S. comparable sales grew 2.6% in the second quarter, missing expectations and coming in well below the 4.6% growth posted a year earlier.
Then you flip the page and see $187.9 billion in revenue, up 5.9%, $0.81 in adjusted EPS, and 23% global eCommerce growth.
Management also pointed to a 125-basis-point drag from health and wellness, while core merchandise remained closer to the 3%–4% growth range it says has held for the past two and a half years.
But the more interesting discovery comes after you work through the quarter.
You see, the company is building a 5-step strategy designed to make customers spend more when they shop, return more often, move that activity into the company’s digital ecosystem, and become increasingly valuable every time they do.
The first step is already producing a number that should make investors sit up: customers using Sparky spend 40% more per order than non-users.
And Sparky is only the opening move.
Step One: Sparky AI
Walmart is not throwing an AI chatbot into the app just to join the AI parade. Sparky users rose 70% year over year, while users of the shopping assistant spend 40% more per order than non-users.
The assistant helps shoppers build meals, create recipes, and load items directly into their baskets. If Sparky keeps making shopping easier, Walmart gets a cleaner shot at expanding the basket before checkout.
Step Two: Speed
Once the basket is built, the company wants customers to have it quickly enough to make fast delivery part of the shopping habit. Fast delivery grew 48% in the U.S., while WMT expanded sub-30-minute delivery to 38 markets.
Customers using fast delivery shop more frequently and are more likely to become Walmart+ members. Sparky gets the order started; speed gives customers a reason to place another one.
Step Three: eCommerce
WMT’s digital growth is no longer just about chasing bigger sales numbers. Global eCommerce grew 23%, including 24% at Walmart U.S., while Marketplace sales rose more than 50%.
More importantly, WMT’s U.S. eCommerce generated double-digit incremental margins during the first half. The growth is still ripping, and the economics are finally moving with it.
Step Four: The Traffic
More digital traffic gives the company something its old retail model could never fully monetize: the ability to sell brands access to customers already inside its ecosystem. Global advertising grew 38%, while Walmart Connect climbed 43%.
The company gets customers in the door, gets more of their spending online, then charges brands to reach them.
Step Five: Walmart+
Membership completes the loop. Members spend roughly four times more than non-members, while membership fee revenue grew 17% globally and Walmart+ delivered its strongest first-half membership growth on record.
Sparky lifts the order, fast delivery increases frequency, eCommerce captures the spending, advertising monetizes the traffic, and Walmart+ keeps the highest-value customers coming back.
The $2.9 Billion Refund Was Real
WMT received substantially all of the roughly $2.9 billion in tariff refunds it was eligible for, a windfall equal to about 0.5% of annual U.S. net sales, and management said the money created a net benefit of approximately 750 basis points to Q2 operating-income growth before the company began plowing much of it back into price investments.
Target (NYSE: TGT) received $994 million, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) roughly $640 million, while Nike (NYSE: NKE) and FedEx (NYSE: FDX) were among other Fortune 500 companies recovering significant amounts.
The refund juiced the quarter. The interesting part is what Walmart did with it.
Instead of sitting on the windfall, the company pushed more of it into prices, increasing rollbacks from 7,200 in the first quarter to more than 11,000 in the second. I’m more interested in what WMT is doing with the money. It just got handed fresh ammunition and chose to fire it at price-sensitive consumers and weaker competitors.
The Chart Is Still Saying the Bulls Have Control
At $114.92, WMT sits above its 20-day SMA of $111.32, 50-day SMA of $106.48 and 200-day SMA of $94.67, keeping the broader trend pointed upward.
The $111.32 area is the first level to watch. Holding it keeps the pullback looking like a breather; losing it puts the $106.48 50-day average on the radar. For now, the chart still looks like what you want a strong mega-cap winner to look like – buyers are taking some chips off the table, but the bigger trend hasn’t broken.
I’m Buying the Weakness
I’m a BUY on Walmart. Wall Street saw a softer comparable-sales number and started looking for cracks. I see a company building a tighter ecosystem around the customer, then finding more ways to monetize every dollar flowing through it.
Just the kind of mega-cap setup I like. I don’t need WMT to become NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). All I need to see is Walmart making each customer more valuable than they were yesterday, and right now, the company is stocking multiple ways to do exactly that.
If the market wants to hand me that pullback while that machine is still gaining speed, I’m taking it.
