Key Stats for Walmart Stock
- Current Price: $119.89
- Target Price (Mid): ~$153
- Street Target: ~$127
- Potential Total Return: ~27%
- Annualized IRR: ~6% / year
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What Happened?
Walmart (WMT) closed at $119.89 on October 23, up 15.4% from $103.92 on September 30. Analysts’ next-12-months normalized EPS estimate sat at $3.00 a share on both dates, according to TIKR. The forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio rose instead, from about 35 times to about 40 times. Almost all of the gain came from investors paying more for the same expected profit. It came ahead of a quarter Walmart guided to 0% to 3% EPS growth.
Costco Rose Too, and Analysts’ Targets Barely Moved
Walmart did not rally alone. Costco (COST) rose 10.2% over the same stretch, from $910.34 to $1,003.32. On October 22, a day chip stocks sold off, Walmart gained 2.82% and Costco 1.99%.
Walmart had its own news that week. It launched a $120 Walmart+ and Sam’s Club Plus bundle on October 20 and opened its site to outside AI shopping agents on October 21. Shares slipped 0.72% and 0.04% on those days. TipRanks tied the October 22 gain to Oppenheimer analyst Rupesh Parikh. Parikh rates Walmart Perform; he said the bundle strengthened its value proposition while flagging a near-term profit headwind.
The Street’s mean target edged from $126.78 to $127.48. It sat about 22% above the share price on September 30 and about 6% above it on October 23.
Marketplace Is Finding New Shoppers. Q3 Won’t Show It Yet
A 40 times multiple needs Walmart to win customers it never had. Manish Joneja, Walmart’s SVP and Global Head of Marketplace and Fulfillment Services, gave evidence of that at a Piper Sandler conference on September 16. Discussing Nespresso, he said “40% of the people who bought that from us never bought coffee from us before.” He also cited high penetration among higher-income households. He described brands that test on the marketplace, find their best sellers and then sell those items to Walmart directly. Walmart has also opened its U.S. seller catalog to shoppers in Canada and Mexico.
That shift builds slowly. For the third quarter, Walmart guided to adjusted EPS of $0.62 to $0.64, against $0.62 a year earlier. Second-quarter adjusted EPS rose 19.1% to $0.81, but that quarter included tariff refunds that Walmart is now putting into lower prices. “I encourage you to consider Q2 and Q3 performance together to assess the underlying growth of the business,” CFO John David Rainey said in the August 20 release.
TIKR tracks 44 analysts on Walmart. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Walmart, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Walmart’s Analyst Ratings
TIKR Advanced Model Analysis
- Current Price: $119.89
- Target Price (Mid): ~$153
- Potential Total Return: ~27%
- Annualized IRR: ~6% / year
The mid case reaches around $153 by January 31, 2031, or about 6% a year from $119.89. The Street’s fiscal 2031 GAAP EPS estimate is about $4.24, so $153 works out to roughly 36 times that year’s earnings. At the October 23 close, Walmart traded at 43.44 times trailing GAAP earnings. The return depends on earnings growth, not a higher multiple.
The main risk is that Walmart keeps putting gains back into prices, as it is doing with the tariff refunds, and earnings fall short of that path. If the forward multiple returned to its September 30 level, the same $3.00 of expected earnings would point to about $104.
Conclusion
Walmart reports third-quarter results on November 19. Adjusted EPS at or above the $0.64 consensus, with the full-year range of $2.80 to $2.87 held or raised, would back the higher multiple. A result at the low end of guidance would leave a stock at 40 times forward earnings reporting flat quarterly EPS.
So what is Walmart stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
