When most investors are thinking about buying a particular stock, they'll start by looking at the underlying company's recent fiscal results. And to be fair, it's a sound approach. Although past performance is no guarantee of future results, that past gives us a reasonably good idea of what the future likely holds.
Still, sometimes we need to dig deeper and examine the qualitative things a company is doing that could alter its quantitative future.
With that as the backdrop, although there's not much unpredictability with its business, Walmart (WMT +0.45%) and its stock are apt to be somewhere pleasantly surprising in the next three years. Here's why.
Meet the new-and-improving Walmart
Walmart is the world's biggest brick-and-mortar retailer, with 90% of U.S. residents living within 10 miles of one of its 4,600 domestic namesake stores, or one of its 600 Sam's Club warehouses. There are almost 5,600 other locations outside of the United States as well.
Last year this giant of a company did $681 billion worth of business, turning $19.4 billion of that into after-tax net income, and extending long-standing (even if occasionally bent and sometimes slow) growth trends. And yes, those numbers confirm the retailer continues to dominate at least North America's general merchandise and grocery retailing landscapes.
Image source: Getty Images.
But the Walmart of yesteryear -- and even the Walmart of today -- isn't quite the Walmart you can expect come 2028. There are several initiatives underway right now that should be measurably more mature three years from now, each of which could make a positive impact on its top and bottom lines.
One of these initiatives is its nascent online advertising business.
If you ever shop at Walmart.com then you've seen advertisements, probably without even giving it a second thought. Every website runs ads these days, after all.
Except, Walmart isn't simply hoping to prompt you into making a purchase of something it's selling. Brands are paying Walmart to promote their particular goods online with these ads. The retailer did $4.4 billion worth of this high-margin advertising business, in fact, up 27% year over year, and bolstering the bottom line for an e-commerce platform Walmart was going to operate anyway. This still only scratches the surface of the opportunity, though. With an ever-growing amount of insight as to what works and what doesn't, this advertising revenue's growth accelerated to a pace of 31% year over year during the first quarter of this year.
While it's not clear exactly where the ceiling is for this business, eMarketer expects average annualized growth of 17.2% for the United States' entire retail media (digital advertising at retailers' e-commerce sites) business. That outlook bodes very well for Walmart.com's long-term ad business growth.
The mega-retailer isn't just looking to the U.S. as a growth engine, however. Indeed, Walmart seemingly understands that it's running out of places within the United States to establish profitable brick-and-mortar stores, having closed 11 of them last year. There's opportunity abroad, and the company is capitalizing on it more than you might realize. In 2023, management announced its goal to grow its international revenue from around $100 billion per year then to $200 billion annually by 2028. After last year's reported tally of $121.9 billion, that target doesn't seem so crazy after all.
NASDAQ: WMT
Key Data Points
Finally, while most investors can acknowledge Walmart has done the unthinkable by building a respectably sized e-commerce business in a market that's dominated by Amazon (AMZN 2.61%), they may be underestimating just how well it's doing online. Although the company itself doesn't disclose the specifics, consensus numbers provided by Statista suggest Walmart's worldwide annual online sales have soared from around $25 billion in 2019 to roughly $100 million last year.
That's still only a drop in the bucket, to be clear. Even within the all-important U.S, market, Walmart's 10.6% share of the e-commerce market is a distant second to Amazon's 39.7%, according to data compiled by industry research outfit Digital Commerce 360.
It's worth noting, however, that Walmart's share of the domestic online shopping market has more than doubled since 2017, while Amazon's share has barely budged. Clearly the company is doing something right.
And remember that each of these initiatives is still a work in progress. We're not yet seeing these efforts working at their eventual, refined best.
But tariffs? Arguably more bark than bite. The longer the standoff lingers, the clearer it becomes that President Donald Trump is posturing as a negotiation tactic. He wants trade to flow as freely as much as anyone.
What it means for revenue, earnings, and Walmart stock
So what does it mean for investors? It means don't be surprised if Walmart outperforms expectations over the course of the coming three years.
As of the latest look, the analyst community is calling for full-year revenue of $766 billion for the 12-month stretch ending in 2027. Extrapolating that annualized growth rate of 4% would put calendar 2028's top line in the ballpark of just under $800 billion. Using the same projection math, per-share earnings should swell from last year's $2.41 to roughly $3.60 for the same time frame. Not bad.
Just bear in mind that analysts could be underestimating Walmart's potential upside just as much as average individual investors are. Walmart's yearly sales growth rate has easily exceeded 6% in most years since 2021, and that's without all the growth weapons the company is successfully wielding now.
As for the stock, assuming its current earnings-based valuation of around 42 times its trailing per-share profits, Walmart stock could be priced around $144 three years from now. That's a 47% gain, or an average annualized improvement of roughly 15%.
Just don't get so enamored by the numbers that you look past the bigger and better reason to own a piece of this company (or any other). That is, Walmart is doing a lot of things right, leveraging its strengths while creating new ones. When an organization does that, everything else including progress from its stock tends to fall in line.
