Walmart said Thursday that holiday-quarter sales rose nearly 6% and its quarterly earnings and revenue surpassed Wall Street’s expectations as gains in e-commerce, advertising and its third-party marketplace boosted its business.

For the full current fiscal year, Walmart said it expects net sales to increase by 3.5% to 4.5% and adjusted earnings per share to range from $2.75 to $2.85. That earnings outlook fell short of Wall Street’s expectations of $2.96 per share, according to LSEG. 

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said speedy deliveries from stores are helping Walmart attract more shoppers, particularly those with higher incomes. 

“Our ability to serve customers at the scale that we have, combined with the speed that we now have, is really translating into continued market share gains,” he said.

Rainey said the company’s market share gains cut across all incomes, but were larger among upper-income households. For example, with fashion, a category that grew by a mid-single-digit percentage in the fourth quarter, almost all of that increase came from households with an annual income over $100,000, he said.

In the coming months, Rainey said he expects price increases from inflation and President Donald Trump‘s tariff hikes to ease. Inflation at Walmart in the U.S. in the fourth quarter was just above 1%, with slightly lower inflation for food and slightly higher for general merchandise, he said.

“It seems to be a little bit more of a normalized price environment,” he said. “I think we have, largely as a retail industry, absorbed or seen the brunt of the impact from tariffs.”

While that comment is welcome news to many U.S. shoppers who buy at the country’s largest grocer, it may be too early to say what pricing trends at the retailer mean for the rest of the economy. Though Walmart is viewed as a key barometer for the wider retail industry, it traditionally has had more power than its competitors to keep prices low in part because of its scale.

Here is what the big-box retailer reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street’s estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: 74 cents adjusted vs. 73 cents expected
• Revenue:  $190.66 billion vs. $190.43 billion expected

Shares of Walmart were up about 2% in morning trading Thursday.

Yet as of Wednesday’s close, shares of the company have climbed about 22% over the past year and roughly 14% so far this year. That’s outpaced the S&P 500′s 12% gain over the past year and less than 1% rise year to date.

Walmart’s results Thursday also show an inflection point in the industry. For the first time, Amazon topped Walmart as the largest company by annual revenue, as the company posted $716.9 billion in sales for its most recent fiscal year compared with $713.2 billion for Walmart.

The companies aren’t an exact comparison, as Amazon gets a sizeable piece of its revenue from cloud computing and other tech services. Yet it underscores the competition between the two rivals, particularly as Walmart follows a similar playbook by growing revenue streams outside of brick-and-mortar retail, like from ads and its marketplace.

In the three-month period that ended Jan. 31, Walmart’s net income decreased to $4.24 billion, or 53 cents per share, compared with $5.25 billion, or 65 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Excluding one-time items like investment gains and losses, legal settlements and business reorganization, Walmart’s adjusted earnings per share were 74 cents.

Revenue rose from $180.55 billion in the year-ago quarter. 

Comparable sales jumped 4.6% for Walmart’s U.S. business and 4% for Sam’s Club in the fourth quarter, excluding fuel, compared with the year-ago period. The industry metric, also called same-store sales, includes sales from stores and clubs open for at least a year.

Walmart’s e-commerce sales in the U.S. rose 27% compared with the year-ago period, fueled by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery of online orders, along with the retailer’s third-party marketplace. That marked the company’s 15th straight quarter of double-digit digital gains. Global e-commerce sales increased 24% year over year.

For the company’s U.S. business, e-commerce accounted for 23% of sales – a record high for Walmart. The digital growth in the quarter included an approximately 50% gain in store-fulfilled deliveries and a roughly 41% increase in sales from Walmart Connect, its advertising business, the company said.

While Walmart is gaining ground, its growth is not evenly distributed across income groups.

In the interview with CNBC, Rainey said the company does “see some pressure on the lowest income cohort.” He said Walmart has tracked year-over-year spending trends by income group. Like in the prior quarter, he said it saw that spending among the highest earners compared to lower-income groups “had gapped out a little bit.”

The trend he described reflects what some economists have called the “K-shaped economy.”

Walmart’s quarterly report marked the first under its new CEO, John Furner. Furner, the former Walmart U.S. CEO and a more than three-decade company veteran, succeeded Doug McMillon as Walmart’s top executive on Feb. 1.

Investors largely expect Furner to focus on similar priorities as his predecessor McMillon, such as increasing Walmart’s online business, attracting more customers across incomes, and ramping up higher-margin businesses like its third-party marketplace and advertising.

Along with getting a new CEO, Walmart has hit other milestones lately. Its stock switched to the tech-heavy Nasdaq in December and its market value hit $1 trillion earlier this month.

Along with its results Thursday, Walmart also announced a new $30 billion share repurchase authorization, replacing a $20 billion buyback program approved in 2022.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the story driving global markets for the past couple of years.

From chipmakers to cloud computing giants, companies associated with AI have driven stock markets to record highs. But alongside the excitement, warnings are growing louder.

With several of the so-called Magnificent 7 (Mag 7) seeing declines in recent months, investors are becoming increasingly nervous that the AI bubble is about to burst.

If this happens, will it be bad news for your pension or investment portfolio?

What is a stock market bubble?

A stock market bubble occurs when asset prices rise rapidly, driven by investor overconfidence and speculation.

Bubbles are dangerous because prices become wildly disconnected from the real value of the companies underneath.

This means they can collapse suddenly and without warning.

When that happens, pensions and investments tied to those inflated stocks can suffer sharp, painful losses that take years to recover from.

Who are the ‘Magnificent 7’?

The Mag 7 is a group of major tech companies with stock growth that, on average, has far outpaced the general stock market over the past decade.

All seven of the firms – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla – are heavily involved in AI, from providing the infrastructure to developing consumer-facing AI applications.

The spectacular rise of these firms has been powering the performance of major indices including the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite.

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Why do experts fear a bubble?

Several major financial institutions have raised concerns that the market may be entering bubble territory, with valuations increasingly detached from underlying earnings.

Back in December 2025, the Bank of England warned that if the AI boom deflated suddenly, the shock could impact the pension pots and investment portfolios of ordinary savers.

Analysts at the bank warned that UK share prices were close to their most overstretched levels since the 2008 financial crisis and that US equity valuations were starting to resemble the run‑up to the 1990’s dot-com crash.

Several of the Mag 7 have stumbled in early 2026, with Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla posting negative returns over the past month. Apple was the only member showing a small gain.

Dan Kemp, CEO and founder of Portfolio Thinking, says: “The recent wobble in these share prices isn’t just about valuation; it’s a referendum on their spending. The market is waking up to the reality that these companies are burning billions on AI infrastructure with no guarantee of immediate returns. It’s less of a bubble popping and more of a reality check: investors are realising they’ve priced in perfection for companies that are currently undertaking the most expensive construction project in history.”

Katy Stoves, investment manager at Mattioli Woods, points out that AI bubble concerns extend far beyond the Mag 7.

“Growing levels of capital expenditure across the sector – with tech giants pouring billions into AI infrastructure – combined with fears about how AI could fundamentally disrupt software business models, are creating sector-wide jitters,” she explains.

What do AI bubble fears mean for pensions?

For people approaching retirement or already drawing an income from their pension, a sudden market correction can be particularly damaging.

The danger for retirees is bad timing – if the market drops just as you start withdrawing income, it can permanently damage your pot.

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“The best defence isn’t to sell everything, but to ensure your portfolio has a ‘crumple zone,’” says Kemp.

“If you are near retirement, you should hold enough cash or bonds to cover your spending for a few years. This buys you the luxury of time, allowing you to wait for the tech sector to recover without having to sell assets at a loss to pay the bills.”

What do AI bubble fears mean for investors?

For anyone investing through ISAs or general investment accounts, the risk is similar. A sudden drop in tech valuations could drag down overall portfolio performance.

Even investors who don’t hold individual tech stocks may be exposed through global index funds, which are increasingly dominated by large US technology firms.

Andrew Prosser, head of investments at InvestEngine, says: “Investors can’t control whether AI gets overhyped or whether tech sells off. What they can control is making sure they’re holding a sufficiently diversified portfolio, and understanding the size of drawdowns it could realistically experience. That way, if a sell-off does arrive, it won’t come as a shock, and they’re less likely to panic at the worst possible time.”

In the end, market ups and downs are part of investing. What matters most is staying focused on the long term, keeping a diversified portfolio, and resisting the urge to react to every market wobble.

When investing, your capital is at risk and you may get back less than invested. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.