Walmart earnings show its focus on margins pays off as Amazon rises

Quartz · Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Catherine Baab

Thu, February 19, 2026 at 11:08 PM GMT+9 2 min read

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“The future is fast, convenient, and personalized,” John Furner, Walmart’s brand new CEO, said in an earnings statement released Thursday morning. And the company’s latest results show the entire organization leaning hard into that vision, with noticeable results.

For the quarter ending Jan. 31, Walmart raked in revenue of almost $191 billion, up some 5.6% year over year. Operating income climbed even faster, topping 10% growth to nearly $9 billion. Earnings per share fell on a GAAP basis, but rose on an adjusted basis, suggesting Walmart’s increasing focus on margins is paying off. More evidence: Full year results show the same pattern in action, with revenue up nearly 5%, adding $32 billion over the prior year.

Amazon has now overtaken Walmart as the world’s largest company by revenue, a spot that Walmart occupied for a decade. But Walmart is playing a different game now. Its scale remains mind-boggling, but the fight for scale has arguably long been won. What’s in focus now is profitability, all the more so in an era in which Big Tech margins effectively set the standard, and Walmart’s entry into the brave new world of AI-inflected retail. And it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Walmart is effectively executing on those ambitions.

Global eCommerce sales surged 24% in the fourth quarter, led by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery and a rapidly expanding marketplace. In the U.S., comparable sales rose 4.6%, with digital contributing roughly 520 basis points to comp growth. Advertising is becoming a meaningful profit engine too, with Walmart Connect sales up 41% in the U.S., helping push global ad revenue up 37% in the quarter. All in all, margins are inching steadily higher — a sign that Walmart’s eCommerce economics are improving after years of steep investment.

Yet more evidence? Walmart’s guidance for its fiscal year 2027 targets similar margin gains, while the company moves to buy back stock, with a $30 billion share repurchase program.

Amazon may now wear the revenue crown. But Walmart is doing something more interesting: tilting at a new series of windmills and rewriting the terms of its own success. That more than anything may suggest the brave new world of retail has already arrived.

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