Walmart Retail Location. Walmart introduced its Veterans Welcome Home Commitment and plans on hiring 265,000 veterans.

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Walmart Q4 results beat estimates, full-year guidance comes bellow estimates

The company reported Q4 earnings results and issued its full-year outlook on Thursday.

2/19/26 7:13AM

Walmart whipsawed in early trading after reporting a quarterly earnings beat but issuing full-year guidance that was below consensus forecasts.

For the three-month period ended January 31, however, Walmart reported results above Wall Street’s expectations:

Adjusted earnings per share of $0.74, compared to the $0.73 analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.
Revenue at $190.7 billion, compared to the $190.5 billion analysts were penciling in.

For its current fiscal year, the company expects:

Adjusted EPS to hit between $2.75 and $2.85, less than the $2.97 analysts are expecting.
Sales to increase 3.5% to 4.5% year over year. Analysts had been forecasting about 5% annual revenue growth.

Shares fell by about 3% in premarket trading but turned green and had gained about 2% by 10 a.m. ET.

This marks the company’s first earnings report under CEO John Furner, a company veteran who assumed the role on February 1. Walmart executives said the company issued conservative full-year guidance because it wants to remain cautious amid an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, noting subdued consumer sentiment and reduced hiring.

“Our goal is to outperform this guidance, but we believe it’s prudent to start the year with a level of conservatism given the backdrop is still somewhat unstable,” CFO John Rainey told analysts.

DA Davidson analyst Michael Baker observed that Walmart has had a habit of sandbagging its guidance, which increases management’s odds of ultimately exceeding that outlook.

“The 2026 and 1Q guidance are both below the Street, but we are not overly concerned about that as we suspect that WMT wants to set a beatable bar,” he wrote. “It’s not surprising that Walmart sets a lower bar for a new CEO.”

Expectations were high leading up to this release. The retail giant, which is up more than 13% since the start of the year, recently became the third non-tech company to hit a $1 trillion valuation.

Investors will be hoping this is not déjà vu all over again: in 2025, the retailer’s soft full-year guidance marked a peak for the S&P 500 and kicked off a momentum stock meltdown.

Walmart reported revenue of $713.2 billion for the full year, just below Amazon’s $716.9 billion, making it the first time the Bentonville-based retailer has trailed its online-native rival on annual sales. Both retail giants have other revenue streams.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks eke out gains on hopes for a path forward for reopening the Strait of Hormuz

Stocks rebounded on news that Iran is drafting a protocol with Oman to “monitor transit” through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.

Matt Phillips3h

AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions takes flight

Small-cap AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions surged Thursday after posting better-than-expected Q2 revenue and profit numbers Wednesday after the close, along with an increase in full-year sales and profit guidance.

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

Its Advanced Computing division designs and sells computers, cabling, and cooling systems, the server racks and clusters of racks AI data centers need. Its other main division sells flash and DRAM memory products.

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

The stock is volatile. Penguin dove during last year’s tariff tantrum that followed “Liberation Day” in April. Then it turned tail and doubled through early October amid a surge of call options activity, which tends to reflect retail interest. From the October peak, it then plunged by about 50%, before Thursday’s renaissance.

For what it’s worth, call options activity in Penguin is pretty busy today, too — relatively speaking — with roughly 2,625 traded as of 1:15 p.m. ET. That’s the most since early January, when the company last reported quarterly numbers. The average volume over the previous 25 trading sessions is about 325 calls a day, FactSet data shows.

Penguin Solutions Stock Takes Off On AI Bolstered Outlook

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

Luke Kawa6h

Momentum returns to optics stocks as the release valve for AI optimism

Potentially imminent end to the war? Buy optics stocks.

Maybe not? Buy optics stocks anyway.

Effectively all the juice left in the AI trade is coming from optics (and memory) stocks. And the latter group is taking a bit of a breather today while the former continues to surge.

Shares of Ciena Corp., Lumentum, and Coherent are building on recent big gains and among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 near midday, while Applied Optoelectronics is also surging on Thursday.

These companies all provide solutions that help information move around in data centers, and thus are key beneficiaries of the aggressive capex plans of hyperscalers. Nvidia has invested $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum in deals that also include purchase commitments.

Matt Phillips7h

Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Globalstar surges after FT reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite group

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Hyunsoo Rim, David Crowther

Can Sandisk do the double?

The S&P 500 just had its worst quarter in years. Here are the biggest winners and losers.

Sandisk and energy stocks soared while software names sank amid a broad sell-off in tech stocks.

Balancing balls of different sizes on pink seesaws creating equilibrium