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Luke Kawa

Walmart’s reign atop the revenue leaderboard poised to pass to Amazon, barring an epic quarter

Walmart has ruled the roost when it comes to revenue generation by an S&P 500 company.

But it may be officially cede that crown when the retailer reports its results on February 20.

The brick-and-mortar retail giant with a big e-commerce footprint is on the verge of being surpassed by an e-commerce giant with a big cloud business. In its most recent quarter, Amazon booked nearly $188 billion in sales, with President and CEO Andy Jassy hailing the holiday shopping season as its “most successful yet.”

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg anticipate that Walmart’s revenues will come in around $180 billion.

The best projection of the bunch calls for $182 billion in sales. Walmart would need to exceed the consensus estimate by about 4.4% in order to maintain its top spot on the top line. Over the past decade, Walmart has beaten revenue expectations by that much or more only once: in the first quarter of 2022, when its sales figure was 4.81% above the consensus forecast.

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Cava may be an unlikely victim of a potential US government shutdown

Government shutdowns typically aren’t a big deal for the stock market as a whole.

But for Cava, which was founded in Maryland and is headquartered in Washington, DC, there’s the prospect of forgone sales in the event that government employees suddenly have no cause to frequent the fast-casual Mediterranean chain, which means emptier tills as bellies get filled elsewhere.

At the end of Q2, Cava had 398 locations. It currently boasts seven in the district proper, at least 14 a close drive away in Virginia, and 25 in Maryland.

Cava’s annual report singled out the Washington, DC/Maryland/Virginia metropolitan area as having “a high concentration of restaurants” in discussing risk factors for the company. And it may be a particularly bad time to be a slop bowl seller around the nation’s capital.

The potential shutdown would be the latest challenge for Cava as it struggles to stand out amid a myriad of lunch options for working professionals and following the recently announced departure of COO Jennifer Somers.

For what it’s worth, this is not the first time this year Cava has faced concerns about potential weakness in DC. During its Q1 earnings call, Bank of America analyst Sara Senatore questioned Cava’s leadership about a potential impact from DOGE given its “fairly big footprint” in the metro area, and at the time CFO Tricia Tolivar said the company hadn’t really seen evidence of metro-specific softness.

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Robinhood surges as prediction markets gain traction

Robinhood jumped to an all-time intraday record of more than $132 late Monday morning on growing optimism about the brokerage’s prediction markets business both on Wall Street and within the company’s own executive suite.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. I own stock as part of my compensation.)

Earlier in the day, Robinhood Chief Executive Vlad Tenev posted this tweet spotlighting that more than 4 billion event contracts have been traded on the platform since they began to be offered in February.

Analysts have also been focusing on the uptick in activity in the events contract business as a potential boon for the shares.

Piper Sandler analyst Patrick Moley published a note on Monday highlighting how trading volumes at prediction market company Kalshi soared to new records over the weekend as traders took positions on the outcomes of college and pro football games using event contracts.

Moley estimates that users at Robinhood — which partnered with Kalshi to offer contracts on games — account for between 25% and 35% of Kalshi’s daily event contract activity.

“We continue to expect HOOD will report ~2.5B of event contracts traded in 3Q25 which, at $0.01/contract, translates to ~$25M in revenue,” Moley wrote.

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.