Walmart WMT

Reference table

1. The business — three segments, and a fourth that is not disclosed

Walmart operates three reportable segments: Walmart U.S., Walmart International and Sam's Club U.S., with a fiscal year ending 31 January. The 10-K describes it as "a people-led, technology-powered omnichannel retailer," operating in the US, Africa, Canada, Central America, Chile, China, India and Mexico with approximately 2.1 million associates as of 2026-01-31, 192 US distribution facilities and 179 outside the US.

Segment net sales (vendor seg_prod, confirmed against the 10-K):

An important reconciliation, because it is a trap. The vendor's seg_prod figures are net sales, not total revenues: they sum to $706.413B against reported total revenues of $713.163B. The 10-K settles it explicitly — "During fiscal 2026, we generated total revenues of $713.2 billion, which primarily comprised net sales of $706.4 billion." The $6.750B difference is membership and other income, which the vendor does not break out. Our derived series is independently confirmed by the filing: the 10-K states membership and other income increased $0.3B in fiscal 2026 and $1.0B in fiscal 2025, and our derivation gives +$0.303B and +$0.959B. Any percentage-of-revenue figure computed off seg_prod is understated by 0.95% (Section 8).

Segment operating income is NOT available from either source. The vendor supplies none, and the 10-K's segment table is a table — stripped from the extracted filing text (Section 8). What the 10-K prose does give is the changes: in fiscal 2026, Walmart U.S. segment operating income increased $1.3B, Walmart International DECREASED $0.4B (a $0.7B charge for modification of PhonePe share-based payment arrangements ahead of a potential public offering), and Sam's Club U.S. increased slightly. In Q1 fiscal 2027: Walmart U.S. +$0.2B, International +$0.3B, Sam's Club slightly.

Geography (seg_geo, on a total-revenues basis, FY2026): United States $581.175B (81.5%), Walmart International $131.988B (18.5%). Note this International figure ($131.988B) differs from the seg_prod International figure ($130.423B) because one is total revenues and the other is net sales; the $1.565B gap is International membership and other income. Both are correct on their own basis.

The fourth business, and the one that matters most for the valuation, is not disclosed. The 10-K says the company's business "continues to expand through offerings such as membership, advertising, marketplace and fulfilment services, and financial services," and the definition of eCommerce net sales explicitly includes "certain advertising arrangements, fulfillment services and data insights." But the only component the company puts a dollar figure on is membership fee revenue: $4.4B, $3.8B and $3.1B for fiscal 2026, 2025 and 2024. Advertising revenue, marketplace revenue and fulfilment-services revenue appear nowhere as separate figures in either the 10-K or the 10-Q. That is the central fact of Section 2.

2. The margin question — the single most important issue for this name

Walmart's entire premium multiple rests on the claim that a mix shift into high-margin non-retail revenue is re-rating the company's profitability. The filings say it has not happened yet.

Here is the evidence, taken directly from the 10-K and 10-Q and stated as the company states it.

Operating income as a percentage of net sales decreased in both of the last two reported periods. Management's own stated objective, in its own words, is "to achieve operating income leverage, which we define as growing operating income at a faster rate than net sales." It is currently doing the opposite. Fiscal 2026 net sales grew 4.7% and operating income grew 1.6% ($29.825B against $29.348B). Q1 fiscal 2027 net sales grew 7.3% and operating income grew 5.0% ($7.493B against $7.135B).

The gross margin is behaving as the bull case predicts. The operating margin is not. Gross profit rate rose in every period — the 10-K attributes it to "disciplined inventory management, as well as growth in higher margin businesses globally," and the 10-Q to "merchandise mix shifts and growth in higher margin businesses, including advertising." So the high-margin revenue is real and is showing up above the line. It is being consumed below it: fiscal 2026 operating expenses rose 20 basis points on $0.9B of higher self-insured general liability claims expense, the $0.7B PhonePe share-based compensation charge, and increased depreciation from the capital programme. Q1 fiscal 2027's Walmart U.S. operating expenses rose 56 basis points on depreciation, associate healthcare costs and business reorganisation charges.

Now the earnings-quality problem, which compounds it. Reported diluted earnings per share grew 13.3% in fiscal 2026 ($2.73 against $2.41) while operating income grew 1.6%. The reconciliation is in the 10-K: "Other gains and losses resulted in a net gain of $2.1 billion and a net loss of $0.8 billion in fiscal 2026 and 2025, respectively, primarily driven by changes in the fair value of our equity and other investments."

Roughly 85% of fiscal 2026's pre-tax income growth came from below the operating line. The same pattern repeats in Q1 fiscal 2027: pre-tax income grew $1.154B while operating income grew $0.358B, so about 70% of the growth was again non-operating. GAAP diluted EPS grew 19.6% ($0.67 against $0.56); the adjusted figure the street tracks grew 8.2% ($0.66 against $0.61).

One consequence worth stating plainly, because it inverts the usual case: Walmart's trailing GAAP earnings are higher than its trailing adjusted earnings ($2.85 against $2.70), so the trailing GAAP price-to-earnings ratio of 39.1x is the flattering number and the honest trailing multiple is 41.3x. Screens show the lower one.

What would change this verdict is not a bigger comp. It is one line: operating income growing faster than net sales, for two consecutive quarters. That is management's own definition, it is measurable at every print, and it is the pre-registered flip condition in Section 11.

3. Growth — excellent at the top, thinning as it descends

Revenue and earnings history:

Comparable sales (calendar basis, from the 10-K and 10-Q):

The eCommerce engine, from the segment disclosure notes:

This is a genuinely impressive number and it deserves to be stated without hedging: Walmart added $50.3B of eCommerce net sales in two years, growing that line at 20-26% a year, and it now represents more than a fifth of everything the company sells. The 10-Q attributes Q1's 26% growth "primarily driven by store and club-fulfilled delivery" — the store network being used as a fulfilment asset, which is the structural argument for Walmart over a pure-play.

Membership fee revenue: $3.1B (FY2024) → $3.8B (FY2025, +22.6%) → $4.4B (FY2026, +15.8%), and +17.4% in Q1 fiscal 2027. Sam's Club U.S. raised annual membership fees effective 2026-05-01 from $50 to $60 (Club) and $110 to $120 (Plus) — recognised ratably over the one-year term, so the benefit phases in across fiscal 2027-28.

Consensus forward path (est, using epsAvg and revenueAvg only — the EBIT/EBITDA rows are rejected, Section 8):

Coverage is deep where it matters (25 analysts on FY2027 and FY2028) and thin beyond (4-5 on FY2030-31). No conclusion in this dive rests on the FY2030 or FY2031 rows. Consensus implies revenue compounding ~5% a year and net margin expanding from 3.07% actual in fiscal 2026 to 3.44% by fiscal 2029 — 37 basis points in three years. Hold that number; it is the load-bearing assumption in Section 6a.

4. Balance sheet and the corrected enterprise value

As at 2026-01-31 (10-K), with the 2026-04-30 position inferred and cross-checked against the 10-Q:

The 10-K confirms the working capital deficit at $22.6B and short-term borrowings at $6.6B (weighted-average rate 4.0%, against $3.1B at 5.3% a year earlier) — so the $10.138B "short-term debt" line is $6.6B of commercial paper and lines of credit plus ~$3.5B of long-term debt due within one year.

The lease double-count failure mode was tested for and is ABSENT. For a retailer this is the single likeliest vendor defect, and it is not here: longTermDebt ($34.624B) and capitalLeaseObligations ($22.333B) are different numbers, and totalDebt ($67.095B) is the exact arithmetic sum of the four components. Capitalised lease obligations are correctly inside total debt and therefore inside enterprise value. That said, the 10-K's lease footnote (Note 6) consists entirely of tables, which are stripped from the extracted filing text, so we cannot confirm from the filing whether the $22.333B is operating-plus-finance lease obligations or finance only. If finance only, true lease-adjusted debt is materially higher and enterprise value understated. Stated as an unresolved gap rather than assumed away (Section 8).

Rebuilding enterprise value at the most recent balance-sheet date (2026-04-30). The vendor's trailing tiles are struck on the Q1 fiscal 2027 balance sheet, which bal_a does not contain (three annual years only). Reconstructing it:

• Cash: cashPerShareTTM $1.3463 × ~7.969B shares = $10.729B, which the 10-Q confirms exactly ("Cash and cash equivalents were $10.7 billion... at April 30, 2026").
• Total debt: implied by the vendor's own enterprise value at $74.18B. Cross-check against the roll-forward: fiscal 2026 close $67.095B, plus the 10-Q's "total outstanding long-term debt increased $2.6 billion" (the 2026-04-30 8-K prices $4.25B of senior unsecured notes — floating 2029, 4.000% 2029, 4.150% 2031, 4.450% 2033, 4.750% 2036, net proceeds $4.230B, settling 2026-04-30), plus "higher short-term borrowings". The roll reconciles to roughly $74B.
• Working capital: vendor workingCapitalTTM −$26.189B, which the 10-Q confirms at −$26.2B. The vendor's Q1 balance sheet is therefore the right one.

> Corrected enterprise value = market cap $887.724B + total debt $74.18B − cash $10.729B + noncontrolling interests $6.563B = $957.74B.

The vendor reports $951.17B. The error is $6.56B, or 0.7%, and it is entirely the omission of noncontrolling interests — Walmart consolidates majority-owned subsidiaries (Walmex, Flipkart, PhonePe) whose minority holders own a real claim on the consolidated EBITDA the multiple is struck against. This is a small error by the standards of this feed and we say so; it is not a reason to distrust the multiples. Corrected: EV/sales 1.320x (vendor 1.311x), EV/EBITDA 19.90x (vendor 19.76x), net debt/EBITDA 1.32x (unchanged — noncontrolling interests are not debt).

Leverage is comfortable and not the issue here. Net debt/EBITDA 1.32x, interest coverage 10.5x, debt to equity 0.786x, $15.0B of undrawn committed US lines at 2026-04-30. Estimated contractual interest on long-term debt totals $17.3B with $1.7B due in fiscal 2027. Unrecorded purchase obligations are $41.4B, of which $18.3B is due within one year — sizeable, but these are inventory and utility commitments in the ordinary course.

5. Cash flow — where the story gets uncomfortable

Operating cash flow is excellent and improving — $41.565B in fiscal 2026, up $5.1B or 14.0%, which the 10-K attributes to higher operating income, lower cash tax payments and payment timing. That is the strongest number in the file.

Free cash flow is not keeping up, because capital expenditure is compounding faster. Over the three years from fiscal 2023, capex compounded at 16.5% a year against operating cash flow at 12.9%. Capex is now 1.88x depreciation and amortisation ($26.642B against $14.203B) — a heavy build cycle in automation, supply chain and stores. The consequence: free cash flow conversion has fallen from 102.6% of attributable net income to 68.2%, and the stock trades at roughly 71x trailing free cash flow for a 1.4% free-cash-flow yield.

Q1 fiscal 2027 was worse: operating cash flow $4.7B (down $0.7B on inventory-receipt timing) and free cash flow of NEGATIVE $1.9B, against +$0.5B a year earlier, on $1.7B of incremental capital expenditure. Q1 is seasonally the weakest quarter, so this is not a trend on its own — but it is not nothing either.

The one genuinely encouraging forward datapoint: fiscal 2027 capital expenditure is guided to $25-27B against $26.642B actually spent in fiscal 2026. At the midpoint that is a decline. After three years of 16.5% annual capex growth, a plateau is the mechanism by which free cash flow conversion recovers — and it is the strongest argument in this dive for patience rather than avoidance.

Capital returns:

Fiscal 2026 shareholder returns of $15.595B exceeded free cash flow of $14.923B, and net debt issuance was +$4.881B. The 10-K explains the buyback step-up as driven "by opportunistic prices during the first quarter of fiscal 2026." That is a defensible one-off at a company with 1.3x leverage, but it should be named rather than presented as organic capital return. Q1 fiscal 2027 repurchases fell to $2.1B from $4.6B, with $28.2B remaining on the $30B authorization approved February 2026 (which replaced the prior $20B programme, of which $4.0B remained).

The forward dividend is $0.99 per share (approved effective 2026-02-19, up from $0.94, paid in four $0.2475 instalments) — a 0.89% yield. Buyback yield at the fiscal 2026 pace is ~0.91%. Total shareholder yield of roughly 1.8%. Share count has fallen from 8,415M (fiscal 2022) to 8,022M (fiscal 2026) weighted-average diluted — about 1.2% a year.

6. Valuation — priced in or room?

At $111.55 (market cap $887.72B, ~7.958B shares):

Peer context is unusable for multiples and we say so. The vendor peer set (BJ $12.34B, Costco $420.35B, Dollar General $28.07B, Dollar Tree $25.12B, Coca-Cola $372.43B, Kroger $35.40B, Ollie's $4.66B, Procter & Gamble $351.87B, PriceSmart $5.97B, Target $67.26B) is reasonable in composition — Costco, Target, BJ's and Kroger are genuine comparables — but the file supplies market capitalisations only, with no earnings or multiples for any peer. No peer-multiple comparison is drawn. Note that Target appears alongside Walmart in one knowledge-base claim (Section 7).

The vendor's own scoring model rates Walmart B with an overall score of 3, with returnOnEquity 5 and returnOnAssets 4 offset by priceToEarnings 1 and priceToBook 1 — the vendor's model reaches the same conclusion this dive does, by a cruder route.

6a. What today's price assumes (the inversion)

At $111.55 — 38.5x fiscal 2027 consensus earnings and 34.1x fiscal 2028's — the price embeds the following falsifiable claims. Every figure is labelled consensus-derived or ours.

• Revenue compounds ~5% a year to $827.1B by fiscal 2029, meaning comparable sales stay near 4% for three more years with no consumer-driven deceleration. (Consensus-derived: $713.163B actual FY26 → $752.305B FY27E (28 analysts) → $787.197B FY28E (27) → $827.058B FY29E (16).) Testable at every print against the 4.3% Walmart U.S. comp that has now printed in five consecutive reported periods.
• Net margin expands from 3.07% to 3.44% between fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2029 — 37 basis points in three years. (Consensus-derived: net income $21.893B on $713.163B actual, against $28.479B on $827.058B for FY29E.) Our reading of the filings is that this has not begun: consolidated operating income as a percentage of net sales DECREASED 13 basis points in fiscal 2026 and 8 basis points in Q1 fiscal 2027, and company-reported return on investment fell from 15.5% to 15.1% to 14.9%. This is the most fragile assumption in the price.
• The high-margin non-retail layer is large enough to justify a retail-defying multiple — even though the company does not size it. (Ours, from the filings.) The 10-K quantifies exactly one component: membership fee revenue of $4.4B, or 0.62% of fiscal 2026 revenue. Advertising, marketplace and fulfilment-services revenue are never disclosed as separate figures in the 10-K or the 10-Q; they are folded into segment net sales and referenced only as "growth in higher margin businesses." The market is paying in advance for a line item the company has never published.
• The market keeps paying roughly 35-40x forward earnings indefinitely. (Ours, from the multiple.) To earn 9% a year for three years from $111.55, the price must reach $144.4 by mid-2029; against fiscal 2030 consensus earnings of $3.953 that requires an exit multiple of 36.5x. At 28x the price is $110.7 — three years of zero price return with consensus fully delivered. The 10-K's own risk factors concede the point: "We believe that the price of our stock generally reflects high market expectations for our future operating results."
• Free cash flow conversion recovers, or the ~71x trailing free-cash-flow multiple is permanent. (Ours, from the cash flow statement.) Fiscal 2027 capex guidance of $25-27B against $26.642B spent is the only forward evidence that it might. Falsifiable at the fiscal 2027 close.
• Knowledge-base cross-reference, labelled: the most directly on-point claim in our file is bearish and dated 2025-08-08 (forward_guidance, conviction 65): "Low-growth staples trade at Nvidia-like 35-42x multiples — a sign 401k/passive inflows are distorting valuations across the market." At 38.5x forward, Walmart sits inside that band today. That claim is now testable rather than rhetorical.

6b. The return bridge (why the multiple moves)

Expected return over 24 months decomposes as: consensus EPS growth (+11-12% a year) + multiple drift (our base assumes COMPRESSION, from 38.5x forward to ~33.6x) + shareholder yield (~1.8%: 0.89% dividend, ~0.9% buyback).

Our base case assumes multiple compression, and that is why a stock with double-digit consensus earnings growth carries a fair value at spot. The arithmetic is stark and worth writing out: at an unchanged 38.5x on fiscal 2028 consensus earnings of $3.274, the price is $126 — a 13% gain requiring no re-rating whatsoever, only the absence of a de-rating. At our base multiple of 33.6x it is $110. At 27x it is $88.

So the entire disagreement between us and the street is a multiple assumption, not a forecast. We are not below consensus on earnings; we use consensus. We are below consensus on what those earnings are worth.

Why we assume compression rather than a hold. Three reasons, each numeric. First, the operating margin is contracting (−13bp, −8bp) while consensus requires it to expand (+37bp over three years) — the direction of travel and the direction of the assumption are opposed. Second, the earnings that grew 13.3% last year did so on a $2.9B non-recurring investment mark, and marks reverse; the operating line grew 1.6%. Third, at 1.41% free-cash-flow yield and 0.89% dividend yield, the stock offers no valuation support from cash returns if the growth narrative slips — there is nothing underneath it.

What would make us wrong, stated fairly: the bull leg needs no re-rating at all, only stability. If the multiple simply holds at 38.5x and consensus delivers, you make 13% over two years plus 1.8% a year in yield. That is a perfectly reasonable outcome and it is why this is a Hold rather than an Avoid. The asymmetry is roughly balanced, tilted slightly negative: −21% to +18%.

6c. Variant perception (where we differ, what would surprise)

Our view of Walmart's fair value is within 1.4% of where it trades. Against the price, we have essentially NO variant perception, and per house convention that is itself a verdict input: no-edge names default toward Hold. But three specific divergences are worth recording.

• We differ sharply from the street's price target, not from its earnings estimates. Consensus target is $140.27 (high $155, median $140, low $120) with 48 buys, 15 holds and 3 sells across 66 analysts. Our base is $110 — 21% below. We use the same earnings ($2.899 FY27E, $3.274 FY28E); we simply decline to capitalise them at 43x, which is what a $140 target on fiscal 2028 earnings implies. Watchable event: whether the $140.27 consensus target falls after the 2026-08-20 print, which would be the street conceding the multiple rather than the fundamentals.
• We differ from the knowledge base's most recent bullish framing on a testable point. The freshest claim in our file (2026-07-26, jordi_visser, conviction 48) holds that "low-margin, labor-heavy firms become big AI winners — a 5% expense cut yields ~20-25% EPS jump; agents deployed as infrastructure unlock margin benefit not yet priced," and a February 2026 claim from compound_and_friends argues asset-heavy staples are ideal AI beneficiaries. The filings currently show the opposite: operating expenses as a percentage of net sales rose 20 basis points in fiscal 2026, and Walmart U.S. operating expenses rose 56 basis points in Q1 fiscal 2027. We do not dispute that the thesis could become true; we dispute that it is happening yet, and we note that the claim's own conviction is only 48. Watchable number: operating expenses as a percentage of net sales, disclosed every quarter.
• We differ on what the drawdown means. A 17.5% decline in a defensive compounder reads as a gift. It is not: a 17.5% fall from 46x forward earnings leaves you at 38.5x. The multiple has moved from extreme to rich, not from rich to cheap. RSI at 47.5 confirms the stock is not oversold on any technical measure.

Positive surprises that would force us to reprice — each mapped to a watchable number:

• Operating income growing faster than net sales for two consecutive quarters. Management's own definition of operating leverage; measurable at each print; would validate the entire mix-shift thesis in one stroke and justify the multiple.
• First-ever disclosure of advertising or marketplace revenue as a separate figure, at a scale that materially changes the consolidated margin arithmetic. Currently undisclosed.
• Capital expenditure landing at or below the $25B low end of the fiscal 2027 guide, taking free cash flow conversion back toward 90%+ and the price-to-free-cash-flow multiple from ~71x toward 45x.
• The Sam's Club fee increase (effective 2026-05-01, $50→$60 and $110→$120) flowing through membership and other income at more than the 11.0% Q1 growth rate, as the ratable recognition builds through fiscal 2027-28.

Negative surprises that would take us from Hold toward Avoid:

• Walmart U.S. comparable sales below 3%. Five consecutive periods at 4.3% is the load-bearing operating fact; a break would remove the growth leg while the multiple is still at 38.5x.
• Other gains and losses turning negative in a quarter, as they did across fiscal 2025 (−$0.8B), which would strip the flattering component out of reported earnings per share and expose 1.6%-type operating growth to a 38.5x multiple.
• Fiscal 2027 capital expenditure above the $27B high end, extending the free-cash-flow squeeze into a fourth year.
• Any material adverse development in the litigation stack — opioid matters, the Asda equal-value third-phase hearing scheduled 2026-11-23, the US Attorney money-transfer investigation, the COFECE proceeding against Walmex, or the India Foreign Direct Investment show-cause notice against Flipkart. The 10-Q states the Company "cannot reasonably estimate any loss or range of loss" for several of these.

Synthos fair values

All three anchors are multiples of fiscal 2028 consensus earnings per share of $3.2743 (25 analysts — the deepest coverage in the estimate block), cross-checked against fiscal 2027 ($2.899, 25 analysts) and fiscal 2030 ($3.953, 4 analysts).

• Bear ~$88 — 26.9x FY28E. Cross-checks: 30.4x FY27E, 22.3x FY30E. The scenario: comparable sales decelerate toward 2-3% as the consumer slows, operating margin continues to contract, other gains and losses reverse to a loss, capital expenditure stays above $27B, and the multiple normalises toward what a 4%-growth defensive retailer has historically commanded. Note this is 7.8% BELOW the 52-week low of $95.42 — it requires a genuine de-rating, not merely a retest. −21.1%.
• Base ~$110 — 33.6x FY28E. Cross-checks: 37.9x FY27E, 27.8x FY30E. The scenario: consensus delivers roughly in full (revenue +5%, EPS +11-12%), the operating margin stops contracting but does not meaningfully expand, capital expenditure plateaus in the guided range, and the multiple drifts down modestly from 38.5x as the growth is recognised as durable rather than accelerating. −1.4%, plus ~1.8% shareholder yield.
• Bull ~$132 — 40.3x FY28E. Cross-checks: 45.5x FY27E, 33.4x FY30E. The scenario: the mix shift finally reaches consolidated operating income, the Sam's Club fee increase and advertising growth push operating income above net sales growth for consecutive quarters, capital expenditure plateaus, free cash flow conversion recovers toward 90%, and the market pays the top of the multiple range it has paid over the past year. Note $132 remains 2.3% BELOW the 52-week high of $135.16 — the bull case does not require a new high. +18.3%.

Base is 1.4% below spot; asymmetry roughly 0.9:1 (21% down, 18% up) — slightly negative, which is the definition of no edge. Against a street consensus of $140.27, we are 21% lower. That combination — fair value at spot, mildly negative asymmetry, a thin and non-specific conviction lane, and a print in 16 days — is a Hold.

7. Knowledge base — broad, shallow, and the most on-point claim is bearish

Tracked knowledge-base claims naming Walmart: 24. Raw hits: 24. Quarantined (quarantine_misattributed): 0. Discarded: 0 — but 2 are near-duplicates and 12 are only tangentially about the company, both of which are discounted below.

The search covered WMT, Walmart, Wal-Mart and Walmart Inc across all 51,928 knowledge-base records, exact-matched on entity name. Distribution: 19 bullish, 3 neutral, 2 bearish, across 17 distinct sources, spanning 2015-01-23 to 2026-07-26. Source concentration: compound_and_friends 5, jordi_visser 2, raoul_pal 2, forward_guidance 2, and thirteen sources with a single claim each.

Half-weighted management and chief-executive voices: 3 claims — andy_jassy_mgmt, jensen_huang and eli_lilly_ceo. None of the three is Walmart management, which is a different problem: they are other companies' executives with Walmart tagged incidentally. jensen_huang's claim (2026-02-04, conviction 85) is a generic statement that every company can become a technology-first company, with Walmart one of six entities named; it carries no Walmart-specific content and is half-weighted to near-zero here. Independent, Walmart-specific, non-duplicated claims: 12 of 24. There is no Walmart-management voice anywhere in the lane, so no self-endorsement problem — but also no company-sourced insight.

The bearish claims — both dated, specific and directly relevant:

> 2025-08-08 · forward_guidance · bearish · conviction 65 · entities: Costco, Walmart

> "Low-growth staples trade at Nvidia-like 35-42x multiples — a sign 401k/passive inflows are distorting valuations across the market."

> 2025-11-06 · raoul_pal · bearish · conviction 75 · entities: Amazon, Walmart, Accenture

> "Big employers freezing/cutting headcount to protect margins; Amazon has same employee count as 2022 despite GDP growth—connection between GDP and hiring broken."

The first of these is the most useful claim in the entire lane, and it is the one this dive agrees with. It names a specific multiple band (35-42x), a specific mechanism (passive inflows), and a specific class of company (low-growth staples). Walmart trades at 38.5x fiscal 2027 consensus earnings today — inside the band. That converts a rhetorical claim into a live, gradeable one.

The bullish lane — the durable structural claims:

> 2025-12-16 · invest_like_the_best · bullish · conviction 80 · entities: Walmart, Costco, Amazon

> "Incumbent scaled players who adopt new tech (Walmart, Costco vs Amazon) can win—those three captured 62% of retail once they got on the same curve."

> 2026-02-19 · odd_lots · bullish · conviction 65 · entity: Walmart

> "Analogy: like brick-and-mortar to e-commerce, incumbents split — Walmart-type players successfully absorb the new paradigm while Sears-type ones die."

> 2025-10-27 · compound_and_friends · bullish · conviction 70 · entities: Walmart, Costco, Amazon

> "Walmart and Amazon wipe out competitors; only Costco reliably survives the onslaught."

> 2025-05-08 · forward_guidance · bullish · conviction 70 · entity: Walmart

> "Large retailers with global sourcing and mostly-domestic inventory (Walmart) gain share; capital-poor small businesses lacking supply-chain teams are hit hardest."

> 2023-03-24 · warren_pies · bullish · conviction 45 · entities: Walmart, WMT, Amazon

> "Walmart's micro-fulfillment buildout and Walmart+ let it leverage a vast footprint to challenge Amazon's core retail more profitably."

The AI-margin cluster — the freshest bull case, and the one the filings currently contradict:

> 2026-07-26 · jordi_visser · bullish · conviction 48 · entities: UPS, CSCO, JBL, CNC, WMT

> "Low-margin, labor-heavy firms become big AI winners — a 5% expense cut yields ~20-25% EPS jump; agents deployed as infrastructure unlock margin benefit not yet priced."

> 2026-02-03 · compound_and_friends · bullish · conviction 60 · entities: Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Walmart

> "Asset-heavy, low-margin staples are ideal AI beneficiaries; an AI layer streamlines operations and drives margin improvement even without volume growth."

> 2026-05-03 · compound_and_friends · bullish · conviction 60 · entities: WMT, TGT

> "Walmart and Target get benefit of the doubt — physical scale plus aggressive AI spend they'll quantify on future calls, not just cite anecdotes."

The neutral claims, one of which is the most intellectually honest entry in the file:

> 2023-09-30 · we_study_billionaires · neutral · conviction 70 · entities: Amazon, Walmart

> "Modern value is hard: Walmart out-earned Amazon 10x on profits yet lost market cap while Amazon gained $350B — intangibles broke Graham-era hard-asset valuation."

> 2025-06-02 · geopolitical_cousins · neutral · conviction 65 · entity: Walmart

> "Unlike 2018's secular stagnation, the 2025 US consumer has pricing power, so tariffs are more likely to pass through into higher prices this time."

What this lane establishes — and what it does not.

It establishes the structural case and nothing about the price. Five separate sources across three years agree that Walmart is a scaled incumbent that successfully absorbs technological change rather than being killed by it, gains share in disruption, and is one of a small handful of retailers that survives. That is a real and consistent finding, and this dive does not dispute a word of it. The 24.4% eCommerce growth and 4.3% comparable sales in the filings corroborate it directly.

It establishes nothing about whether $111.55 is the right price. Not one of the 24 claims addresses Walmart's valuation constructively. The only claim in the file that addresses the multiple at all is bearish (the 35-42x passive-distortion claim), and it argues the stock is expensive. A conviction lane that is broadly positive on the business and silent-to-negative on the price is a Hold lane, not a Buy lane, and we grade it that way.

Why Low-Moderate rather than Moderate. Twenty-four claims sounds substantial; the honest count is smaller. Two are near-identical same-day entries from compound_and_friends (2025-10-03) and count as one. Three carry management or chief-executive slugs and are half-weighted. Roughly a third — the stablecoin and Genius Act cluster (raoul_pal 2025-11-27, jordi_visser 2025-11-05, natalie_brunell 2025-09-02) and the broad AI-productivity cluster (real_vision 2023-03-13, lex_fridman 2022-04-13) — name Walmart as one entity in a thematic list rather than as a company thesis. Two are more than a decade or seven years old (marko_papic 2015-01-23 on the dollar; eli_lilly_ceo 2019-12-22 on home goods) and are stale. Twelve independent, Walmart-specific, current claims across a $888B company is a thin lane, and we report it as thin rather than dressing 24 raw hits as conviction.

8. Data integrity — what we rejected from the vendor file and why

Eleven items. Two rejections, one filing-versus-vendor contradiction, several reconciliations, and one clean pass worth recording.

1. est.ebitAvg and est.ebitdaAvg are unusable — ALL EBIT and EBITDA estimate rows REJECTED. The fiscal 2026 estimate row can be checked against a reported actual, and it fails badly: ebitAvg of $42.642B against actual operating income of $29.825B — 43.0% too high; ebitdaAvg of $58.132B against reported EBITDA of $46.471B — 25.1% too high. What makes this diagnostic rather than merely broken is that the other rows in the same block are fine: epsAvg of $2.638 against actual adjusted earnings per share of $2.65 (−0.5%), netIncomeAvg of $21.161B against actual attributable net income of $21.893B (−3.3%), sgaExpenseAvg of $146.634B against actual $147.943B (−0.9%). The corruption is confined to the EBIT/EBITDA lines. All forward valuation in this dive runs on epsAvg, per the data contract. Separately, the fiscal 2024 row carries a nonsensical range (ebitdaLow $25.096B against ebitdaHigh $37.644B, a 50% spread) and is rejected outright.

2. km_ttm.enterpriseValueTTM ($951.174B) omits noncontrolling interests of $6.563B — corrected to $957.74B. Walmart consolidates majority-owned subsidiaries (Walmex, Flipkart, PhonePe) whose minority holders hold a real claim on consolidated EBITDA. The error is 0.7% — small by this feed's standards, and we say so plainly rather than inflating it. Corrected multiples: EV/sales 1.320x, EV/EBITDA 19.90x.

3. The lease double-count failure mode was TESTED FOR and is ABSENT — recorded because it is the likeliest defect for a heavy-lease retailer. longTermDebt ($34.624B) and capitalLeaseObligations ($22.333B) are distinct figures, and totalDebt ($67.095B) is the exact sum of shortTermDebt ($10.138B) + capitalLeaseObligationsCurrent ($2.487B) + longTermDebt ($34.624B) + capitalLeaseObligationsNonCurrent ($19.846B). Capitalised leases — 33.3% of total debt — are correctly inside total debt and therefore inside enterprise value. No correction required.

4. UNRESOLVED GAP: the 10-K's lease footnote is a table, and tables are stripped from the extracted filing text. Note 6 (Leases) in the extracted 10-K consists of four table captions with no numbers beneath them. We therefore cannot confirm from the filing whether the vendor's $22.333B of "capital lease obligations" is operating-plus-finance lease obligations or finance leases only. If finance only, true lease-adjusted debt is materially higher and enterprise value understated. This is stated as an open question, not resolved by assumption. The same stripping affects the consolidated balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement and segment tables — all of which appear in the extraction as headers followed by "See accompanying notes." All filing-derived figures in this dive come from Management's Discussion and Analysis prose and from footnote prose, where inline numbers survive.

5. seg_prod is NET SALES by segment, not total revenues — a 0.95% understatement if used as a revenue base. FY2026 segments sum to $706.413B against reported total revenues of $713.163B. The 10-K settles it: "total revenues of $713.2 billion, which primarily comprised net sales of $706.4 billion." The $6.750B gap is membership and other income, which the vendor never breaks out. Our derived membership-and-other series ($6.750B / $6.447B / $5.488B) is independently confirmed by the 10-K's stated increases of $0.3B and $1.0B. Note also that the seg_prod schema is inconsistent across years: the fiscal 2019 row uniquely carries a fourth line, "Membership and Other" ($4.038B), and uses different segment labels ("Walmart United States", "Sam's Club") from every other row.

6. seg_geo contains a duplicated year and inconsistent labels. The fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2020 rows are identical to the dollar (United States $402.532B, Non-United States $121.432B in both) — one of the two is wrong, and neither is used. Labels alternate between "UNITED STATES"/"Walmart International" (fiscal 2026, fiscal 2018) and "United States"/"Non-United States" (all other years). The fiscal 2026 row is sound and reconciles exactly ($581.175B + $131.988B = $713.163B, matching total revenues), and is the only geographic figure used.

7. quote and tech disagree on the 52-week range and the 50-day average. quote reports a high of $135.16 and a low of $95.42; tech reports $134.20 and $96.05. The implied drawdown is −17.47% (quote) against −16.88% (tech). quote.priceAvg50 is $115.6346 against tech.sma50 of $115.036. The 200-day averages agree ($118.00 / $118.03). We report the quote range as the headline — it captures intraday extremes, and tech is computed from closes per the data contract. The ~1% difference is immaterial to the verdict but is flagged so a reader comparing this dive to a screen is not confused.

8. FILING BEATS VENDOR: stock-based compensation is reported as ZERO in every year and it is not zero. cf_a.stockBasedCompensation is $0 for fiscal 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, and km_ttm.stockBasedCompensationToRevenueTTM is 0. The 10-K states directly that "Share-based compensation expense is generally included in operating, selling, general and administrative expenses in the Company's Consolidated Statements of Income," discusses restricted stock and performance-based restricted stock units at length, and quantifies a $0.7B charge related to modification of share-based payment arrangements at the PhonePe subsidiary. The vendor reports $0; the 10-K shows a real and material expense; we use the 10-K. The absolute annual figure sits in a stripped table and cannot be recovered, so no share-based-compensation-adjusted metric is computed anywhere in this dive.

9. earn_cal.epsActual is ADJUSTED earnings per share and inc_q.epsDiluted is GAAP — mixing them produces nonsense. Q4 fiscal 2026: earn_cal reports $0.74 while inc_q reports GAAP diluted $0.53 — a 40% gap. Q1 fiscal 2027: $0.66 against $0.67. We keep the two series strictly separate: trailing GAAP diluted earnings per share $2.85 (39.1x), trailing adjusted $2.70 (41.3x). The consensus estimate block (est.epsAvg) is on the adjusted basis, confirmed by the fiscal 2026 estimate of $2.638 matching the summed adjusted quarters of $2.65.

10. ratios_ttm.shareholdersEquityPerShareTTM ($11.837) contradicts bookValuePerShareTTM ($12.671). The $0.834 per-share gap is approximately $6.6B on 7.969B shares, which is almost exactly the $6.563B of noncontrolling interests — so one figure is on a total-equity basis and the other on a Walmart-shareholders basis, but the file does not say which. We use $12.671 for the 9.42x price-to-book and note the ambiguity. Tangible book value per share of $9.138 reconciles cleanly to tangibleAssetValueTTM of $72.823B.

11. profile.lastDividend ($0.965) matches neither declared annual rate. Fiscal 2026's declared annual dividend was $0.94 and fiscal 2027's is $0.99 (10-K Note 12, Subsequent Event, approved effective 2026-02-19, paid in four $0.2475 instalments). The $0.965 figure is a trailing blend of two rate regimes. The forward dividend is $0.99, a 0.89% yield, and that is the figure used.

Verified and NOT a defect — the post-split share basis is clean. The brief flagged a risk that per-share series might mix pre- and post-split figures. They do not, and this was checked four ways. (a) The 2026-06-05 8-K reports 7,970,990,515 shares outstanding at the 2026-04-10 record date, which at $111.55 gives $889.2B against the vendor's $887.72B market capitalisation — a 0.2% difference consistent with repurchases since April. (b) The weighted-average diluted share count declines smoothly and monotonically from 8,541M (fiscal 2021) to 8,022M (fiscal 2026) with no discontinuity; a pre-split year would print near 2,700M and none does. (c) The reported earnings-per-share series ($1.62 / $1.62 / $1.42 / $1.91 / $2.41 / $2.73) shows no threefold step. (d) The 10-K states diluted earnings per share of $2.73, $2.41 and $1.91 for fiscal 2026, 2025 and 2024, matching inc_a exactly. Every per-share figure in this dive is on a consistent post-split basis.

Also verified, not defects. The pt block shows genuine dispersion (high $155, low $120, median $140, consensus $140.27) across 66 rated analysts — unlike the single-value target sets seen elsewhere in this feed, this is a real consensus. The NASDAQ exchange field is correct and recent: the 10-K records that "Effective December 9, 2025, the principal market on which Walmart's common stock is listed has been the Nasdaq Global Select Market," moved from the NYSE. Non-equity tripwire not triggered: WMT is common stock at $111.55 with beta 0.603, 28.07M shares traded and a 42%-wide 52-week band — not a preferred share or baby bond.

Gaps stated rather than filled. Segment operating income in absolute dollars is unavailable from both sources (vendor supplies none; the 10-K table is stripped) — only the year-over-year changes survive in prose. Advertising, marketplace and fulfilment-services revenue are not disclosed by the company in either filing. Earnings-call transcripts are not available on this plan, so management's Q&A around the fiscal 2027 outlook is absent; the 2026-05-21 8-K furnishes the earnings release and a financial presentation under Item 2.02 but not the call. No fiscal 2027 revenue or operating-income guidance appears in the filings in hand — only capital expenditure guidance of $25-27B.

9. Technicals — a real drawdown that is not yet a real discount

• Price $111.55, +0.76% on the session. Volume 28.07M against a 22.06M average (+27%). The stock opened at $108.90, below the prior close of $110.71, traded a low of $108.56, and closed near the session high of $111.64. A gap down bought back through the day is a modestly constructive intraday pattern inside an otherwise poor trend.
• −17.5% from the 52-week high of $135.16; +16.9% above the 52-week low of $95.42. The stock sits almost exactly in the middle of its annual range. (tech computes −16.9% and +16.1% off a slightly different range — Section 8.)
• BELOW both moving averages: −3.5% under a 50-day average of $115.63 and −5.5% under a 200-day average of $118.00.
• RSI 47.5 — neutral, and specifically NOT oversold. There is no mean-reversion signal here. MACD −1.23 — negative.
• Relative performance is the real story: 3-month −14.4% against SPY +7.6% and QQQ +7.7% (a 22-point deficit); 6-month −10.1% against SPY +11.1% (a 21-point deficit); 12-month +13.3% against SPY +24.3% and QQQ +30.8% (11 to 17 points behind).
• Practical read. This is a defensive mega-cap that has de-rated while the index compounded — which is exactly what happens when a high multiple normalises rather than when a business breaks. The drawdown is real; the discount is not. A 17.5% decline from roughly 46x forward earnings leaves you at 38.5x. There is no technical support case to make: the stock is below both averages, RSI is neutral rather than washed out, and the next catalyst is a print in 16 days at a multiple that requires a beat. The zone at which the technical and valuation cases would converge is nearer the 52-week low of $95.42 (roughly 29x fiscal 2028 consensus earnings), which is 14.5% below spot.

10. Insiders — no signal, on a sample far too short to read

The reading, stated carefully: there is no signal here, and the sample is too short to look for one. The vendor supplies only the last eight transactions, spanning 2026-06-30 to 2026-07-17 — a 17-day window. That is not a period from which any trend can be drawn.

Of the eight, four are F-InKind tax withholding on vesting — automatic, not discretionary, and not a sentiment signal in either direction. Two are A-Award director share grants to Gregory Penner (the board chairman, holding 263,110 shares) and Randall Stephenson — routine retainer compensation.

Only two are discretionary: Christopher James Nicholas, an Executive Vice President, sold 2,900 shares across two transactions at $113.87 and $114.48 on 2026-07-16 — about $331,000, leaving him 573,314 shares. That is 0.5% of his position. It is noise.

What is notably absent is any open-market buying. Across a period in which the stock traded 15-16% below its 52-week high, no insider in this sample bought a share on the open market. That is not bearish — insider purchases are rare at mega-caps and the window is 17 days — but it is worth recording that the drawdown has not drawn a single voluntary insider bid in the data available. Nothing in this section moves the verdict.

11. Verdict, kill-criteria and flip conditions

Hold.

The business is not the question and we should be explicit about that. Walmart grew total revenues 4.7% to $713.163B at a $700B base, ran Walmart U.S. comparable sales at 4.3% for five consecutive reported periods, compounded eCommerce net sales 24.4% to $150.4B — now 21.3% of net sales — grew membership fee revenue 15.8% to $4.4B, generated $41.565B of operating cash flow, and carries 1.32x net leverage with 10.5x interest coverage and a beta of 0.603. That is one of the best operating records available in a listed company of this size, and nothing in this dive disputes it.

The price is the question, and it answers itself. At $111.55 you pay 38.5x fiscal 2027 consensus earnings, 34.1x fiscal 2028's, 41.3x trailing adjusted earnings and roughly 71x trailing free cash flow for a business whose consolidated operating margin contracted 13 basis points in fiscal 2026 and 8 more in Q1 fiscal 2027, whose reported 13.3% earnings growth was ~85% supplied by below-the-line investment marks, and whose free cash flow conversion has fallen from 102.6% to 68.2% on a capital programme running at 1.88x depreciation.

Our base fair value of $110 lands 1.4% below spot. That is a no-edge finding, and under house convention no-edge defaults to Hold. The asymmetry is −21% to +18%, slightly negative. We are 21% below the street's $140.27 target, but we are not below the street's earnings — the entire disagreement is what those earnings are worth.

On the 2026-08-20 print, 16 days out. This is outside the five-day banner rule but far too close to establish a position ahead of. Consensus is $0.742 adjusted (+9.1% year over year) on $186.806B of revenue (+5.3%). At 38.5x forward, an in-line print is not sufficient — the multiple requires acceleration, and the specific line that matters is operating income growth against net sales growth, which has been negative on a margin basis for two consecutive periods. Any accumulation should be staged after the print, not before it; a staged entry ahead of a print is not a Hold decision but a Buy — Tactical one, and we are not making that call here.

Pre-registered KILL criteria — what would move this to Avoid:

• Walmart U.S. comparable sales below 3% in any reported quarter. Five consecutive periods at 4.3% is the load-bearing operating fact; losing it while the multiple is still near 38x removes the only leg the price stands on.
• A third consecutive period of operating margin contraction. −13 basis points in fiscal 2026 and −8 in Q1 fiscal 2027 can be explained by the PhonePe charge and self-insurance claims; a third makes it structural and invalidates the entire mix-shift thesis.
• Other gains and losses swinging to a net loss, as they did in fiscal 2025 (−$0.8B). This would strip the flattering component out of reported earnings per share and expose 1.6%-type operating growth to a 38x multiple in the same quarter.
• Fiscal 2027 capital expenditure guided or tracking above $27B, extending the free-cash-flow squeeze into a fourth year and keeping the price-to-free-cash-flow multiple above 70x.
• A material adverse development in the litigation stack — the Asda equal-value third-phase hearing beginning 2026-11-23, the opioid matters, the US Attorney money-transfer investigation, the COFECE proceeding against Walmex, or the Flipkart Foreign Direct Investment show-cause notice. The 10-Q states no loss or range of loss can be reasonably estimated for several.
• Consensus fiscal 2028 earnings per share revised below $3.10 on the 25-analyst line, which would take the base case below $105.

Pre-registered FLIP TO BUY (upsize) conditions:

• Operating income growing faster than net sales for two consecutive quarters. This is management's own stated definition of operating leverage, it is measurable at every print, and it would validate the mix-shift thesis in a single stroke. It is the single most important flip condition in this dive.
• A price below ~$95 (roughly 29x fiscal 2028 consensus earnings, near the 52-week low of $95.42), at which the base case becomes +16% and the asymmetry inverts.
• First disclosure of advertising or marketplace revenue as a separate figure, at a scale — say, above $8-10B annualised with disclosed margin characteristics — that materially changes the consolidated margin arithmetic.
• Fiscal 2027 capital expenditure landing at or below $25B with free cash flow conversion recovering above 85%, taking the price-to-free-cash-flow multiple from ~71x toward the mid-40s.
• Membership and other income growing above 20% for two consecutive quarters as the Sam's Club fee increase ($50→$60, $110→$120, effective 2026-05-01) recognises ratably through fiscal 2027-28.

Where WMT fits in the Synthos Framework Portfolio. The defensive / low-beta consumer sleeve, as a hold-if-owned, 0-1% new-money position. The justification for the low weight is not the business, which would justify a core position at a different price; it is that our fair value is at spot, the conviction lane is thin and non-specific on valuation, and the multiple has more room to compress than expand. If the position already exists, there is no reason to sell a 0.60-beta compounder with a fortress balance sheet into a 17.5% drawdown. If it does not exist, there is no reason to establish it at 38.5x forward earnings 16 days before a print. That is what Hold means here, precisely.

Single biggest risk: multiple compression. At 38.5x fiscal 2027 consensus earnings and roughly 71x trailing free cash flow, a drift to 28x on fiscal 2030 consensus earnings of $3.953 produces $110.7 — three years of zero price return with consensus delivered in full. Nothing about the business has to go wrong. The 10-K concedes the exposure in its own risk factors: "We believe that the price of our stock generally reflects high market expectations for our future operating results."

Most fragile assumption in the price: that the mix shift into advertising, marketplace, fulfilment services and membership expands the consolidated operating margin. Consensus requires net margin to widen 37 basis points between fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2029. The two most recent reported periods delivered −13 and −8 basis points of operating margin. The company sizes exactly one component of the mix — membership fee revenue at $4.4B, or 0.62% of revenue — and discloses none of the others. If that shift is real and arriving, this stock is worth more than $132. If it is a story the market has already paid for, it is worth less than $88. We cannot tell from the disclosure available, and neither can the market. That uncertainty, priced at 38.5x, is the Hold.

Provenance & disclosures

• Traceability: 24 tagged knowledge-base claims name Walmart (breadth 17 sources, net conviction positive-moderate). Distribution 19 bullish / 3 neutral / 2 bearish. Sources: compound_and_friends (5), jordi_visser (2), raoul_pal (2), forward_guidance (2), and thirteen single-claim sources (andy_jassy_mgmt, odd_lots, jensen_huang, invest_like_the_best, natalie_brunell, geopolitical_cousins, we_study_billionaires, warren_pies, real_vision, lex_fridman, macro_trading_floor, eli_lilly_ceo, marko_papic). Searches covered WMT, Walmart, Wal-Mart and Walmart Inc across 51,928 records. 24 raw hits, 0 quarantined (quarantine_misattributed returned nothing), 0 discarded outright. However: 2 claims are near-duplicate same-day entries from one source (2025-10-03) and count as one; 3 carry management or chief-executive slugs (andy_jassy_mgmt, jensen_huang, eli_lilly_ceo) and are half-weighted — none is Walmart management, so there is no self-endorsement problem and equally no company-sourced insight; roughly a third name Walmart only within a thematic list (the Genius Act / stablecoin cluster and the broad AI-productivity cluster); and 2 are seven to eleven years old. Independent, Walmart-specific, current, non-duplicated claims: 12. All quotes are verbatim from the stored claim text.
• Data as-of: fundamentals — income statement and segment data 2026-04-30 (Q1 fiscal 2027, 10-Q filed 2026-05-29); balance sheet and cash flow 2026-01-31 (fiscal 2026, 10-K filed 2026-03-13), with the 2026-04-30 balance sheet inferred from km_ttm and cross-checked against 10-Q prose · estimates 2026-08-04 · prices 2026-08-04 ($111.55; 50-DMA $115.63; 200-DMA $118.00; RSI 47.5; MACD −1.23) · knowledge-base claims 2026-08-04. Filings used: 10-K 2026-03-13 (FY2026), 10-Q 2026-05-29 (Q1 FY2027), 10-Q 2025-12-03 (Q3 FY2026), and three 8-Ks (2026-04-30, 2026-05-21, 2026-06-05). No figure comes from memory, recall or external retrieval.
• The three 8-Ks, identified: 2026-04-30 — pricing of $4.245B aggregate principal of senior unsecured notes (Floating Rate 2029 $350M, 4.000% 2029 $650M, 4.150% 2031 $1.0B, 4.450% 2033 $1.25B, 4.750% 2036 $1.0B), net proceeds $4.230B, for general corporate purposes, settling 2026-04-30. 2026-05-21 — Item 2.02 furnishing of the Q1 fiscal 2027 press release and financial presentation (furnished, not filed; the earnings call is not included). 2026-06-05 — the 2026-06-04 Annual Shareholders' Meeting: a charter amendment limiting officer liability under Delaware law was approved and filed; all eleven director nominees elected to one-year terms; Ernst & Young ratified for fiscal 2027; say-on-pay approved; four shareholder proposals rejected, including one requesting a report on the workforce impact of AI and automation. This filing also supplies the hard share count used to verify the split basis: 7,970,990,515 shares outstanding at the 2026-04-10 record date.
• Data rejections (detailed in Section 8): all est.ebitAvg and est.ebitdaAvg rows rejected — the fiscal 2026 row is 43.0% and 25.1% above the reported actuals respectively, while epsAvg, netIncomeAvg and sgaExpenseAvg in the same block reconcile within 3.3%, so forward valuation runs on epsAvg alone; the fiscal 2024 estimate row rejected for a 50%-wide EBITDA range. km_ttm.enterpriseValueTTM corrected from $951.174B to $957.74B (omits $6.563B of noncontrolling interests, a 0.7% error). cf_a.stockBasedCompensation of $0 in every year REJECTED — the 10-K states share-based compensation expense is recorded within operating expenses and quantifies a $0.7B PhonePe modification charge; the filing wins, and no share-based-compensation-adjusted metric is computed since the annual figure sits in a stripped table. profile.lastDividend of $0.965 rejected in favour of the declared fiscal 2027 dividend of $0.99 (10-K Note 12, Subsequent Event). ratios_ttm.shareholdersEquityPerShareTTM ($11.837) flagged as contradicting bookValuePerShareTTM ($12.671) by approximately the noncontrolling-interest balance; the latter is used. seg_prod reconciled and relabelled as net sales, not total revenues (a 0.95% base difference), with the fiscal 2019 row noted as schema-inconsistent. seg_geo fiscal 2019 and 2020 rows rejected as identical duplicates; only the fiscal 2026 row is used. quote and tech 52-week ranges and 50-day averages flagged as disagreeing by roughly 1%. earn_cal.epsActual identified as adjusted, never mixed with inc_q GAAP diluted earnings per share (a 40% gap in Q4 fiscal 2026).
• Filing-versus-vendor summary, per the standing rule: the vendor reports $0 of stock-based compensation in every year; the 10-K describes share-based compensation expense recorded within operating, selling, general and administrative expenses and quantifies a $0.7B modification charge at PhonePe — we use the 10-K. The vendor's seg_prod implies fiscal 2026 revenue of $706.413B; the 10-K states total revenues of $713.2 billion, of which net sales were $706.4 billion — we use the 10-K, and identify the $6.750B difference as membership and other income. The vendor's enterprise value of $951.174B excludes noncontrolling interests carried on the balance sheet at $6.563B — we use the corrected $957.74B. Elsewhere the vendor and the filings agree: cash of $10.7B at 2026-04-30, the $26.2B working capital deficit, the $22.6B fiscal 2026 working capital deficit, diluted earnings per share of $2.73 / $2.41 / $1.91, and the Nasdaq listing all reconcile exactly.
• Basis note — post-split share count VERIFIED, not assumed. The brief flagged a risk of mixed pre- and post-split per-share figures. Four independent checks say there is none: the 2026-06-05 8-K's 7,970,990,515 shares outstanding at the 2026-04-10 record date reconciles to the vendor market capitalisation within 0.2%; the weighted-average diluted count declines monotonically from 8,541M to 8,022M with no discontinuity; the earnings-per-share series shows no threefold step; and the 10-K's stated $2.73 / $2.41 / $1.91 matches inc_a exactly. Every per-share figure in this dive is on a consistent post-split basis.
• Filing-extraction gap — material and stated rather than worked around. The extracted 10-K and 10-Q text strips all HTML tables, so the consolidated balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, segment tables, lease footnote and long-term debt schedule appear only as captions. All filing-sourced figures in this dive come from Management's Discussion and Analysis prose and footnote prose, where inline numbers survive. Consequences: segment operating income is available only as year-over-year changes, not absolute dollars; the operating-versus-finance lease split cannot be confirmed; and the annual share-based compensation figure cannot be recovered. Each is flagged where it bites.
• Estimate-coverage note: deep where it matters — 25 analysts on fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2028 earnings per share, 27-28 on the revenue lines — and thin beyond, at 10 analysts for fiscal 2029 and 4-5 for fiscal 2030 and 2031. Fiscal 2028 ($3.2743, 25 analysts) is the primary forward anchor; no conclusion rests on the fiscal 2030 or 2031 rows, which are used only as directional cross-checks. epsAvg reconciles to reported adjusted actuals within 0.5% and is treated as reliable; the EBIT and EBITDA estimate rows do not and are rejected entirely.
• Peer note: the vendor peer set (BJ's $12.34B, Costco $420.35B, Dollar General $28.07B, Dollar Tree $25.12B, Coca-Cola $372.43B, Kroger $35.40B, Ollie's $4.66B, Procter & Gamble $351.87B, PriceSmart $5.97B, Target $67.26B) is reasonable in composition, with Costco, Target, BJ's and Kroger genuine comparables. The file supplies market capitalisations only — no peer earnings, margins or multiples — so no peer-multiple comparison is drawn anywhere in this dive.
• Fair-value caveat: the $88 / $110 / $132 anchors are 26.9x / 33.6x / 40.3x fiscal 2028 consensus earnings per share of $3.2743 (25 analysts), cross-checked against fiscal 2027 ($2.899) and fiscal 2030 ($3.953). Stated multiple arithmetic on consensus earnings, not a discounted cash flow, and not our own earnings forecast — we use the street's numbers and differ only on the multiple. The base case assumes modest multiple compression from 38.5x; the bull case requires no re-rating at all, only the absence of a de-rating, which is why it is not treated as the fragile leg here. EBITDA-based valuation is avoided throughout because the estimate block's EBITDA rows are rejected as corrupt.
• Timing: Q1 fiscal 2027 was reported 2026-05-21, 75 days before this dive, and is fully reflected. Q2 fiscal 2027 reports 2026-08-20 — 16 days away — on consensus of $0.742 adjusted earnings per share and $186.806B of revenue. That is outside the five-day banner threshold but close enough that it is an explicit input to the verdict and to the staging guidance in Section 11.
• Earnings-call transcripts are not available on this plan. Management's Q&A, including any fiscal 2027 revenue or operating-income guidance, is therefore absent from this analysis. The 2026-05-21 8-K furnishes the earnings release and financial presentation under Item 2.02, not the call. No management quotes are invented; every quotation in this dive is verbatim from a filing or a knowledge-base record.
• Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalised. No recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security is made to any person.
• Version: 2026-08-04-full.