Walmart Slips Despite Raised Guidance as Wall Street Digests a Mixed Earnings Day

Key Highlights

• Walmart (NYSE:WMT) US comparable sales rose just 2.6% year-on-year, the weakest pace since 2020, missing the 3.8% analysts expected even excluding a drag from new pharmacy pricing rules.
• Shares dropped as much as 8.7% to $104.34 shortly after the open before paring the loss to around 6.6%.
• Q2 Revenue reached $187.9bn, up 5.9% year-on-year, powered by 23% ecommerce growth and a 38% jump in Advertising revenue.
• Operating income rose 28.8% to $2.1bn (+17.4% adjusted, including tariff-refund effects).
• Full-year net sales guidance was raised to 4.0%-5.0% growth from 3.5%-4.5%, though Q3 guidance of 3.0%-3.75% landed below expectations on a Flipkart sales-timing shift.
• Elsewhere: Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) fell 7.8% on profit-taking after Wednesday's 177% surge; crypto names Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) and Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) rallied on Trump's push for crypto legislation; Deere (NYSE:DE) rose 2.1% on strong earnings; Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Advance Auto Parts (NYSE:AAP) and Coty (NYSE:COTY) all sold off on Earnings misses.

Walmart's Quarter: Strong Headline, Soft Core

Walmart (NYSE:WMT) beat Wall Street's earnings estimates for the second quarter, but investors focused on the one number that missed: comparable sales. US same-store sales rose 2.6% year-on-year, held back by new pricing regulations in the pharmacy business; stripping that out, growth was still only 3.4%, short of the 3.8% analysts had modeled. It was the slowest comparable sales pace the retailer has posted since 2020. Shares fell as much as 8.7% to $104.34 at the open, before settling to a decline of roughly 6.6% on the day.

The underlying Business showed more strength than the headline miss suggested. Total revenue reached $187.9bn, up 5.9% year-on-year, driven by 23% growth in ecommerce and a 38% jump in advertising revenue — Walmart's fastest-growing and highest-margin segment. Operating Income climbed 28.8% to $2.1bn on a reported basis, or 17.4% on an adjusted basis that strips out the effect of Tariff refunds. CFO John Rainey called the business model "only getting stronger and more durable," pointing to the raised full-year outlook as evidence.

That guidance raise — full-year net sales growth now seen at 4.0%-5.0%, up from 3.5%-4.5% — was itself not enough to satisfy the market, which had priced in more. Third-quarter guidance of 3.0%-3.75% growth landed below consensus, though Rainey attributed the softer near-term outlook to a timing shift: Flipkart, Walmart's Indian ecommerce arm, has moved its Big Billion Days sales event from the third quarter into the fourth. Investors, unconvinced by the explanation or simply unwilling to look past the comparable-sales miss, sold the stock anyway.

Futures Slip as the Bond Rally Stalls

Stock futures declined Thursday as Walmart's results weighed on the S&P 500 and the previous session's bond-market rally lost momentum. As the largest US retailer and a bellwether for consumer spending, Walmart's earnings carry outsized influence over sentiment on any given morning — and a rare miss on its core sales metric was enough to unsettle a market otherwise contending with a mixed bag of single-stock news.

Crypto Catches a Bid on Washington Comments

Crypto-linked equities were the day's standout gainers after President Donald Trump urged Congress to pass Cryptocurrency legislation, a comment that also lifted Bitcoin and other digital assets. Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) added 5%, Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) gained 3%, and Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) advanced 9%, extending a pattern in which crypto-adjacent stocks trade as leveraged proxies for regulatory sentiment as much as for digital-asset prices themselves.

Pharma Whiplash: Moderna Cools After a Historic Surge

Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) fell 7.8% as investors booked profits following Wednesday's 177% surge, triggered by data showing that a Moderna-Merck Vaccine stopped melanoma from recurring or spreading in patients. Merck (NYSE:MRK) slipped a further 1% after its own near-13% gain in the prior session. The pullback in both names looked more like ordinary profit-taking than a reassessment of the underlying data — moves of that size rarely hold in a straight line.

Earnings Scorecard: Deere Up, Alibaba and Auto-Parts Retailers Down

Deere (NYSE:DE) rose 2.1% after better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter earnings gave investors reason for optimism following a rough stretch for the stock. Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) moved the other way, falling 5.6% after fiscal first-quarter earnings missed expectations even as its artificial-intelligence revenue continued to soar — a reminder that AI momentum alone is not yet enough to offset broader growth concerns for the company.

The sharpest moves came from smaller-cap retailers. Advance Auto Parts fell 19% after reporting a second-quarter decline in same-store sales as consumers pulled back on spending, dragging AutoZone (NYSE:AZO) and O'Reilly Automotive (NASDAQ:ORLY) down 2.6% and 1.9% respectively. Coty (NYSE:COTY) sank 19% to $2.45 after the France-based beauty company posted a wider-than-expected loss and guided for both revenue and adjusted gross Margin to decline in the current quarter.

The SpaceX Aside

SpaceX fell 2.6% to $136.01. The rocket and artificial-intelligence company was once billed as the stock that would upend the "Magnificent Seven" and create a "Great Eight," but so far its shares have shown a far stronger correlation with the broader US Equity market than with any distinct AI or space-economy thesis — trading, on days like this one, like just another large-cap name caught in the market's general drift.

Disclaimer: Figures reflect company-reported results and same-day market moves as described in source reporting. Share prices and percentage moves are intraday figures and subject to change by market close. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute Investment advice.