Walmart (WMT) managed to beat Wall Street expectations for its second-quarter financials on numerous fronts, but multiple equity research analysts have reduced their share-price targets on concerns about sales growth.
On Thursday, Aug. 21, Walmart announced revenues grew 5.9% year-over-year during its fiscal Q2, to $187.9 billion, exceeding consensus estimates of $186.8 billion. Earnings of 81¢ per share also cleared expectations of 74¢ by a comfortable margin.
However, comparable-store sales growth of 2.6% were well less than the 3.5% expected and marked the slowest such expansion for the big-box retailer since 2020. And its guidance boost—WMT raised full-year sales guidance from a range of 3.5%-4.5% to a range of 4%-5%, and increased its EPS outlook from a range of $2.75-$2.85 to $2.80-$2.87—wasn’t enough for investors, either.
Walmart stock sank by 9% as a result, and Wall Street followed up with multiple price-target cuts Thursday and Friday.
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Wall Street Still Bullish on Walmart, But a Little More Cautious
Argus Research was one of several analyst outfits lowering their price expectations on WMT stock. While Christopher Graja maintained his Buy rating on Walmart’s shares, he reduced his price target to $130 per share from $145 previously, which still represents about 25% upside from Thursday’s closing price.
Graja noted that maximum fair price legislation weighed on Walmart’s Health & Wellness business, which in turn dragged down comparable-store sales; he notes that excluding Health & Wellness, “comps” would have been up 3.4%.
“There are two bearish issues here,” he says. “The first is that even when adjusted for the health and wellness business, the 2Q comp is below the 3.5% consensus. Second, some drag from pharmacy pricing may have been anticipated by the analyst community and reflected in the 2Q comps. Maximum fair pricing legislation was a headwind to comp sales in 1Q27 as well.”
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He also pointed to the quarter-to-quarter deceleration comps as a potential signal of higher gas prices holding back consumers. CFO John David Rainey acknowledged this issue during the second-quarter earnings conference call:
“It sort of states the obvious, of seeing some incremental pressure on the consumer relative to the beginning of the year with higher fuel prices. As you go through month by month in the last quarter, you can tell when fuel prices increase and got above $4, and perhaps there’s a psychological impact to that, that there are choices that consumers are making.”
Graja notes that despite high gas prices and other inflationary issues, “we believe Walmart is doing a superb job of winning and retaining customers by taking the long view and lowering prices and offering deals on important products.” But he reduced his target price based on a reduction in its estimates for Walmart earnings, as well as “a small increase to our cost of equity calculation (because of higher Treasury rates).”
| Walmart (WMT): Quick Stats | |
|---|---|
| Market cap | $825.6 billion |
| Dividend yield | 1.0% |
| Forward price-to-earnings (P/E) | 39.2 |
| Price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) | 4.36 |
| Source: Yahoo! Finance. Data is as of Aug. 21, 2026. | |
Also Friday, Truist’s Scot Ciccarelli and Joseph Civello maintained their Buy rating but lowered their price target to $114 per share from $140 previously.
“While the company raised guidance, we (and most others) were already ahead of the prior guide,” they say. “Our CY26/CY27 [earnings estimates go] to $2.85/$3.15 from $2.90/$3.25 (mostly due to higher gas/supply chain costs that have become a major 2Q theme), and we initiate our CY28 at $3.45.”
They do note, however, that Walmart has plowed their refunds from the Trump administration’s now-struck-down tariffs into reducing prices, which should further widen the affordability gap with the retailer’s rivals.
“The company has rolled back prices on 11,000 products compared to 1Q of 7,000 and a typical quarter around 5,000,” Ciccarelli and Civello say. “Rollbacks are typically for 90 days but when proven successful (total dollar uplift), it will often make a rollback permanent. Management expects most of the rollbacks implemented to convert into permanent price reductions and expects total sales dollars to increase as unit velocity accelerates from elasticity.”
“While this wasn’t the beat-and-raise quarter we have become accustomed to from WMT, the company continues to gain share, is further widening price gaps and rapidly growing their higher-margin alternative revenue streams,” they add.
Other price-target cuts came from UBS (to $130 from $141 previously), BMO Capital Markets (to $126 from $145), and Piper Sandler (to $128 from $137).
Wall Street as a whole now sees WMT shares at $129.18 in 12 months, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. That would still represent a 25% price improvement from Thursday’s close. And Walmart didn’t suffer any recommendation downgrades; the stock still enjoys 36 Buy calls against six Holds and one Sell. Long-term earnings growth estimates sit around 9%.
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