What’s going on here?

Walmart revealed an impressive package of quarterly results on Thursday, but the world’s biggest retailer admitted it might struggle to keep it up.

What does this mean?

The holiday season’s usually lucrative for Walmart, and last year was no exception. The grocery giant pulled in slightly more revenue and profit than investors expected, boasting sales that were strong across the board. But Walmart’s expectations for this year weren’t all good tidings. The firm is forecasting sales to increase by 3% to 4%, as most analysts expected. But it sees annual profit rising between 3.5% and 5.5% – and that’s without accounting for the impact of acquisitions and the leap year, which should shave 1.5 percentage points off that increase. That’s a serious letdown for investors, who had predicted an uptick as high as 10%. And they were quick to express that disappointment, initially sending Walmart’s stock down 9%.

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: The only certainty is uncertainty.

Walmart might be playing it safe because of the tariffs on the table. Most of its wares are made in the good ol’ US of A, but about a third are shipped in from abroad. So if the mooted import taxes on goods from Mexico and Canada take hold, Walmart could end up paying the price – literally. And unless it can pass those extra costs onto shoppers without losing customers, the firm could feel the pinch in its bottom line.

Zooming out: Hey, look over there!

Chinese companies risk being bitten by tariffs too, but Alibaba distracted investors from that daunting prospect with a seriously swish set of results. The country’s biggest retailer revealed forecast-beating quarterly revenue and profit on Thursday – not least because its AI-powered cloud computing business really did the, um, business. Impressed, investors initially sent its stock up 10%.

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*Top crypto ATM operators, as of March 2025. Source: coinatmradar.com**Bitcoin ATM share of global cash ATMs, February 2024. Sources: Davos Insights report; Statista data

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