沃尔玛2027财年Q2业绩直播
Key Takeaways (AI-Generated)
Financial Performance
- Total net sales grew 5% in constant currency, at the top end of guidance
- Global e-commerce net sales grew 23%, with Walmart US e-commerce up 24%
- Adjusted operating income increased 17.4% in constant currency, including tariff refund benefits
- Adjusted EPS increased over 19%
Business Highlights
- Delivered over 11,000 rollbacks during the quarter, up from 7,200 at Q1 end
- Expanded sub-30 minute delivery to 38 markets in the US
- AI assistant Sparky usage up 70%, with users spending 40% more per order
- Over 3,100 US stores now served with automated freight processing
Financial Guidance
- Raised fiscal year sales guidance to 4-5% from previous 3.5-4.5%
- Raised full year operating income guidance to 7-8.5% from previous 6-8%
- Raised full year EPS guidance to $2.80-$2.87 from previous $2.75-$2.85
- Expect double-digit free cash flow growth for the year
Opportunities
- Market expansion with Walmart Plus launch in Canada and marketplace extension to Mexico
- AI-powered shopping assistant Sparky driving 40% higher spend per order for users
- Supply chain automation improving speed with 50%+ e-commerce fulfillment through automated facilities
- Better Goods private brand now achieving billion-dollar brand status
Risks
- Higher fuel costs creating over $2 billion incremental costs above original guidance assumptions
- Maximum fair pricing regulation creating 125 basis point headwind to Walmart US comp sales
Full Transcript (AI-Generated)
Operator
Greetings. Welcome to Walmart second Quarter Fiscal 27 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press *0 on your telephone keypad. I'll now turn the conference over to Steph Wissing, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, Steph. You may begin.
Steph Wissing
Welcome everyone joining me today from our Home Office in Bentonville, our CEO, John Ferner and CFO, John David Rainey. We'll begin with highlights of the previous quarter and our outlook for the year. Then we'll open the line for your questions.
During the question and answer portion, we've invited Seth Delaire, our Chief Growth Officer as well as segment leadership to join Dave Gugina from Walmart US, Chris Nicholas from Walmart International and Latrice Watkins from Sam's Club US so we can address as many of your questions as possible. Please limit yourself to one question.
For additional detail on our results, including highlights by segment, please see our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website. Today's call is being recorded and management may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements.
These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. Please review our press release and slide presentation for a cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements as well as our entire Safe Harbor statement and non GAAP reconciliations on our website at stock.walmart.com. That concludes my introduction. John over to you.
John Ferner
Good morning and thanks for joining us. I want to start by thanking our associates around the world. Their commitment to serving customers and members every day is what drives our business and the results we delivered this quarter reflect their hard work.
This is a good quarter for Walmart and shows once again that our strategy is proving out. We've been investing against it for years, and I'm even more bullish today as we see the pieces increasingly powering each other. A strong retail foundation alongside faster growing businesses like marketplace, advertising and membership.
The math isn't simply 1 + 1 = 2. The value comes from how these businesses work together with each one strengthening the others and expanding what the company can do as a whole. And as these businesses scale, they become a more meaningful part of our mix and they're changing the shape of our business.
We're accelerating growth and improving the overall economics of the company. The model is working and we're confident in its power to drive durable long term growth and shareholder value. The underlying business continued to perform well in the quarter and was largely in line with our expectations, which assumed a slight moderation in sales growth from the first quarter.
Overall, we continue to gain market share. We grew units and transactions and membership fee revenue was at an all time high on growth of 17%. We delivered another quarter of strong e-commerce growth of 23% globally, including the 10th consecutive quarter of growth over 20% for Walmart US.
And we also expanded the reach of platform businesses like Walmart Plus and Marketplace, the markets outside the United States, demonstrating how we're leveraging these for growth. And as we build and scale these capabilities across markets and begin to operate globally on the platforms we've built during the last few years of transformation, we're seeing the same dynamic.
These businesses work together, deepen our relationship with customers and members and create additional opportunities for growth and stronger economics. Our core retail business had another strong quarter with sales growth at the top end of our guidance, up 5% in constant currency.
Comp sales for Walmart US were 2.6% led by transactions and Sam's Club US delivered comps of 4.4%. International was up 7.9%, led by China and India. For Walmart US, I feel good about how the underlying business is performing.
The team delivered strong sales growth in categories like toys, pantry and fresh, and we continue to see growth from higher income households. Changes in regulation around maximum fare pricing for certain drugs negatively impacted comp sales by 125 basis points. John David will share more about the makeup of the US comp and talk to the additional color we provided in today's earnings presentation.
Turning to profits adjusted operating income grew 17.4% in constant currency. This includes the benefit from the receipt of tariff refunds in the quarter. And as we suggested on the last call, our intent was to deploy much of that back into price and that's what we're doing.
Importantly, our underlying profit growth was where we thought it would be. Excluding this benefit, because of our strong top and bottom line growth, we're raising our guidance for the year. Now let me take a moment to talk about specific drivers of our growth.
First, everything we do starts with serving customers and members as an Omni channel retailer. Core to that is delivering value and maintaining price leadership. As we said coming out of Q1, customers tell us they're still feeling some pressure, but it's clear customers are looking for value and convenience, and they want things fast, and that's where Walmart shines.
Having the best prices across a basket of goods helps us continue to build trust with our customers and members by helping them save money at a time when many households are carefully managing their budgets. The Walmart U.S. team delivered more than 11,000 rollbacks during the quarter, up from 7200 rollbacks at the end of the first quarter, demonstrating our commitment to price investment.
We're investing heavily in price because customers need us to and because we believe it drives market share gains over time. Our price gaps to conventional grocers here in the US are strong and they continue to widen. The share gains we see from this channel have persisted alongside the drug and dollar formats.
A secondary I'd like to highlight is our ongoing strength in e-commerce. The sustained growth we've seen in e-commerce across the company over multiple years points to more than a digital success story. It's evidence that customers and members increasingly choose Walmart because they know we combine low prices across a broad assortment with speed and convenience.
The mix of e-commerce for Walmart International is now 30% with strong growth again this quarter in China, India and Canada. Growth in Q2 was 19%. Sam's Club US grew e-commerce 26% with delivery from Club up triple digits following the launch of our one hour delivery back in April.
Walmart US delivered growth of 24%, Marketplace grew 52% and advertising was up 38%. We believe a factor in this growth is our ability to deliver with speed. Customers and members around the world are getting super fast deliveries of baskets that include pharmacy, fresh frozen fashion and general merchandise often in under 30 minutes.
Fast delivery in the US grew 48% for the quarter. Speed matters and we have a significant competitive advantage. Our physical footprint, fulfillment infrastructure and local delivery capabilities allow us to move closer to customers while maintaining an attractive cost structure.
We've now expanded sub 30 minute delivery into 38 markets here in the US, giving millions of additional customers access to faster fulfillment. And speed isn't simply a fulfillment metric, it's an acquisition strategy. Customers who use fast delivery shop with us more frequently.
They deepen engagement with us, and they're more likely to become Walmart Plus members. The advances we're making in speed of delivery create another reason for customers that choose Walmart for more shopping occasions. That's an important shift in how we think about growth.
And as we become faster, we're not simply taking share within traditional retail categories. We're expanding the number of occasions where Walmart can serve customers like food delivery. In the past, customers may have thought about Walmart primarily for groceries and general merchandise.
Today, we're expanding beyond that. Meal solutions, prepared food partnerships like the one we announced with Subway and Faster Fulfillment allow us to participate in a much broader share of everyday food spending. This is an exciting opportunity and we're just getting started.
The third area I'd like to highlight is our platform strategy. We're building capabilities that are increasingly scalable across markets. Marketplace fulfillment services, membership, advertising and other commerce solutions are strengthening our business and they're improving the economics of the company.
This quarter, we expanded our US marketplace platform capabilities into both Mexico and Canada and we launched Walmart Plus in Canada. Membership was also a highlight with double digit growth for Walmart Plus and strong growth for Sam's Club in the US, China and Mexico.
We also gave a boost to our advertising business with the acquisition of Vibe, we believe Vibe expands our ability to help advertisers of all sizes reach customers through self-service tools while measuring results against real shopping behavior. Combined with Walmart Connect and Vizio, this further strengthens our platform and creates value for customers, sellers, suppliers and advertisers.
These are important milestones because they demonstrate the value we're creating across the company rather than building entirely new capabilities market by market, we're increasingly able to build once, improve continuously and scale globally. That makes us faster and more efficient and allows customers and more markets to benefit from innovations developed anywhere across Walmart.
The 4th area is our supply chain. We've invested in automation, technology, fulfillment capacity and our physical network and these investments are showing up in customer experience. They're allowing us to move inventory more efficiently, deliver faster, help with in stock levels and support the growth of both our first party and marketplace businesses.
They also strengthen the economics of our Omni channel model. And as we improve density and utilization across our network, speed and profitability reinforce one another. And you can see how these advantages build on each other.
When we invest in our supply chain, it helps us get more products to our customers and members faster. When they get items faster, they shop with us more frequently both online and in our stores. And as frequency increases, our suppliers and sellers want to be closer to the point of purchase. It's reinforcing.
Finally, let me talk about how AI is helping make Walmart faster, more convenient and personalized. We continue to take a people LED, tech powered approach. We're using AI to make our work easier and help our associates grow and be at their very best.
We believe AI will improve nearly every part of our business by making shopping better and our associates work easier. Sparky is a great example. The number of customers using Sparky is up 70% from last year, and the customers and members who use Sparky for shopping spent 40% more per order than others who don't.
Someone recently shared with me that they asked Sparky for a weekly meal plan of healthy foods with high protein options. Within a few seconds, Sparky shared recipes and meal kits with the ability to Add all the ingredients they needed their basket with one click.
Sparky even recognized the ingredients they'd recently purchased both online and store, so they didn't buy something they already had. It's building trust when you step back. What encourages me the most is how these areas are increasingly connected with the deepest pockets who are willing to eat is supposed to, you know, maybe an entrepreneur who just wants to go out there and be opportunistic.
I'll close my comments where I began, and that's by thanking our associates. The progress we're making is possible because of the way they serve customers and members each and every day, the way they embrace new technology and the way they continue to find better ways to operate.
I'm excited about the momentum we have, confident in the strategy we're executing and even more optimistic about the opportunities ahead. With that, I'll turn it over to John David to walk through the quarter of more detail.
John David Rainey
John, David, I'll echo John sentiments. We're pleased with the way our business is performing, especially during the more recent operating environment that's been marked by some near term macro crosswinds. Our business model is only getting stronger and more durable and this gives us confidence to raise our sales and operating income growth guidance for the year with the tariff refunds.
There are some idiosyncrasies to this quarter's results, so I'll provide a deeper view of the impacts and discuss how we're thinking about these factors looking into the second-half of the year. 1st, I'll start with the financial and operational highlights.
Enterprise net sales growth in constant currency of 5% was at the top end of our guidance of 4 to 5%, driven by growth in e-commerce, Sam's Club and China. This quarter demonstrates the benefits of our diversified portfolio of businesses across channels, formats and markets.
Global e-commerce net sales grew 23%. Continuing the strong momentum of the last several years, Sam's US and our International segment we're both accretive to enterprise sales growth. Sam's comps were driven by a 7% increase in transactions with solid growth and unit volumes international constant currency sales.
Increased nearly 8%, led by 9.7% growth in China. Walmart US net sales increased 3 1/2 percent, including a comp sales increase ex fuel of 2.6%, slightly below our initial expectation due to lower health and Wellness sales that were impacted by a larger headwind from maximum fare pricing. I'll talk more about this in a minute.
Enterprise adjusted operating income on a constant currency basis increased over 17% and adjusted EPS increased over 19%. This performance reflects the net benefit from the tariff refunds we received partially offset by price investments in the quarter as well as improved incremental margins in our digital business with strength and high margin.
Commerce Solutions operating income growth included a net benefit of approximately 750 basis points related to tariff refunds received in Q2. Setting aside this benefit, underlying operating income growth was at the top end of our seven to 10% guidance.
Our outlook reflects the continued prioritization of the remaining tariff refunds in the customer experience and price investments in the second-half. For this reason, I encourage you to consider Q2 and Q3 performance together to assess the underlying growth of the business.
I want to take a moment to further emphasize the positive progress we're making in our e-commerce businesses. Digital is driving our growth, customer spend and market share gains across all operating segments. As we deploy these digital capabilities outside the US, it allows us to move with speed from an operational perspective.
From a financial perspective, this allows us to grow at a lower marginal cost. Walmart USE commerce grew 24% in Q2 with over 40% sales growth in store fulfilled deliveries, 20% growth in average weekly customers and over 50% growth in marketplace sales.
E-commerce growth was also strong at Sam's Club US, up 26% and our international segment up 19% led by China, India and Canada. Sustained e-commerce momentum enables the growth of commerce solutions businesses, advertising, marketplace, data ventures and membership.
I'll start with global advertising, which increased 38%, driven by another strong quarter from Walmart Connect in the US and Flipkart ads. Walmart US advertising, including Vizio, also increased 38%, led by Strength and Walmart Connect, which was up 43%.
The momentum in marketplace and fulfillment services continued this quarter with US net sales up 52%. Nearly 50% of the marketplace business flowed through Walmart Fulfillment Services in Q2, an increase of nearly 400 basis points versus last year.
We're benefiting from a broader marketplace assortment that includes more of the key brands that customers want. Walmart Data Ventures continues to drive meaningful growth. Users value the platform's enhanced decision intelligence capabilities, which uncovered shared growth opportunities across Walmart's formats and markets.
We announced today that we're extending the Scintilla platform to Sam's Club US next year, addressing one of the top requests from our suppliers. Rounding out our profit mix drivers, membership income grew nearly 17% globally.
Sam's Club US membership increased nearly 6%. This was driven by steady growth in member counts and plus penetration. Sam's Club China hit new record highs and member counts and we saw strong relative performance in our Sam's format in Mexico.
We're especially pleased with a continued strong double digit growth in our US Walmart Plus program, resulting in the best first half of membership growth in its history. We're building what we believe can be the most essential membership program for consumers and excited for what's ahead.
The thing that people sometimes overlook when reflecting on our membership program is the incrementality that we see on GMV. Our members spend approximately 4 times more than non members. Turning to incremental margins, the profitability of our e-commerce business continues to improve.
Our Walmart USE commerce business achieved double digit incremental margins for the first half of the year. This was driven by continued strong add in membership revenue, further densification of our delivery network, growth in fee based.
Fast deliveries which represented an all time high of 37% of store fulfilled deliveries in the quarter. And lastly, the benefits of automation. 3100 of our US stores are now served with some level of automated freight and we're processing over 50% of our e-commerce fulfillment volume through automated facilities.
Now I want to address a few areas in a little more detail. The 1st is the Walmart US comp. To help understand the composition of our US comp sales by merchandise category, we provided an additional disclosure in our supplemental slide deck, which is slide 14.
The chart on that slide shows Walmart US comps excluding the health and Wellness category. Over the last 2 1/2 years, sales in our core categories have been extremely consistent, largely in the three to 4% range on a quarterly basis.
For outlier periods such as last quarter, when looking at a two year average growth falls right into the middle of a similar 3 to 4% range. We expect core comps in a similar range in the second-half. However, when looking at the Walmart US total comps including health and Wellness during each of FY25 and FY20, 6, we realized 100 basis points of a tailwind from sales of GLP One branded drugs in FY20.
7. The benefit from GOP ONE is expected to be roughly half that amount as script count growth is more than offset by price mix headwinds new in FY20 7, we cited A100 basis points headwind to total comp sales from deflation and brand to generic transfers under the first year of maximum fair price regulation.
In Q2, this negative impact was closer to 125 basis points and we've updated our estimate for FY20 7 impact to be similar at 125 basis points. Putting all this together, sales of core merchandise categories have been consistent, but at the total US comp level, we've had nearly a 200 basis point net swing and comp sales growth from the trailing 2 year pace to this year entirely tied to our Health and Wellness category.
It's important to note that this unfavorable impact is to the top line only. We're pleased with the underlying performance and the profit contribution of our health and Wellness business. Next, I want to discuss in store comps.
They were down low single digits in Q2, consistent with a trend that began in late Q4 last year. This headwind is primarily driven by the negative impact from the health and Wellness business where the vast majority of the sales occur in store.
The role of our stores has evolved as our model has changed. e-commerce sales now represent over 23% of our mix in Walmart US, which is double the level from just five years ago. The more Omni we become, the more important our stores become, not less important, more important between in store shopping and digital fulfillment.
We have more unit volumes transacted through our stores than ever before as they are the last mile fulfillment nodes for 80% of our e-commerce orders and 100% of our fast deliveries. As e-commerce profit margins continue to improve, we're becoming increasingly agnostic about channel dynamics while enabling customers to shop on their terms.
Next, I want to discuss the tariff refunds in a little more detail. As we shared with you in May, we were eligible for approximately $2.9 billion of tariff refunds, amounting to about half a percent of annual US net sales.
To date, we received substantially all of these tariff refunds. As John mentioned, we've taken a disciplined approach to investing these funds back in the customer experience and price leadership, prioritizing investment in grocery and general merchandise categories.
Looking forward, our Q3 guidance reflects the continued impact of pricing actions taken in Q2 alongside continued prioritization of tariff refunds in the price investment. We would encourage you to look at our operating income growth for Q2 and Q3 together to assess the underlying performance of the business.
Now I'll turn to SG and A. We leveraged wages in Q2 as we continue to improve productivity through increased usage of tech tools by associates in stores in streamlined inventory flow enabled by supply chain automation.
More than offsetting these benefits were higher depreciation related to CapEx and increased self insurance cost. Inventory at quarter end increased 6% in constant currency. Slightly higher than total enterprise sales growth, the increase reflects cost inflation as well as higher inventory to support strategic initiatives in the US including the optimization of inventory across fulfillment notes.
Turning the guidance, we have increased confidence in the long term value drivers of our business. Our business is strong. E-commerce and related businesses offer compelling growth and we are consistently generating strong incremental margins.
We're raising our fiscal year sales guidance to 4 to 5% from 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 percent previously. There are 4 assumptions worth highlighting. The first is this upward revision reflects the pass through of first half performance, but also assumes slightly better second-half sales versus our prior guide as price investments Dr. accelerated and sustained share gains.
Price investments are an immediate benefit to customers that build value over time for the business. Second, we're incorporating a larger headwind from maximum fare pricing within the Walmart U.S. business.
Based on year to date experience, we now estimate the full year headwind to Walmart US comp sales will be closer to 125 basis points. Next, we expect Sam's Club US and international to be growth accretive to the enterprise in both Q3 and Q4.
Walmart U.S. sales growth is expected to improve in Q3 as the investment in customer value translates into stronger cells. And lastly, the timing of Flipkart's Big billion days will impact the cadence of Q3 and Q4 sales growth.
This year, we expect AQ 3 headwind of over 100 basis points sales growth as we lap last year's event. We expect that Q4 sales growth will benefit by a similar amount for this year's event. Overall for the enterprise, we expect sales growth in Q3 to be between 3:00 and 3.75%.
Regarding operating income, we're raising our full year guidance to 7 to 8 1/2% versus 6 to 8% previously. We expect the financial impact from the tariff, refund receipts and reinvestment will be largely contained within the current fiscal year with the objective of driving sustained customer benefits and share gains in the second-half and into future years.
Our guidance assumes that fuel costs persist at current rates. We now expect more than $2 billion of incremental fuel related costs this year above and beyond our original guidance assumptions. We also expect cost related to the acquisition and integration of Vibe to be an approximate 20 basis points headwind to OY growth.
Inclusive of planned investment of tariff refunds, Q3 operating income growth on a constant currency basis is expected to grow 2 to 4%. Notably, a large portion of the refunds were invested at the end of Q2, so the full quarter impact of these investments is more pronounced in Q3.
When looking at Q2 and Q3 reported operating income together, growth would average approximately 10% per quarter. We're raising our full year EPS guidance to $2.80 to $2.87 from $2.75 to 285 previously. For Q3, we expect EPS of 62 to 64 cents.
I want to be really clear on this point. We're at the midpoint of our year and we're raising our full year guidance to reflect confidence in our ability to sustain growth and share gains. Importantly, we're raising in the face of more than $2 billion of incremental cost tied to higher fuel prices in arguably A softer consumer environment than in February when we introduced our initial outlook.
As such, we feel it's prudent to remain cautious by only raising the guide modestly. We now expect slightly higher CapEx for the year at approximately 4% of annual net sales. Even with this increase, we expect to generate double digit growth in free cash flow this year.
In closing, our teams continue to focus on what we do best, serving customers and members with everyday great value, exceptional convenience and speed, all while pushing our business model forward, diversifying our profit mix and leading and agentic experiences. We're now happy to take your questions.
Operator
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone indicate your line is in the question queue.
You may press *2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue for participants using speaker equipment. It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Thank you.
And our first question is from the line of Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Kate McShane
Good morning. Thank you for taking our question. We wanted to focus our question this morning on the tariff refunds and price investment with your most recent incremental pricing investments.
I know you mentioned you're expecting a slightly better second-half as a result, but have you already started to see an acceleration in units? And just given the price investment is such a focus in the market, can you talk about vendor support versus how much Walmart is investing and how do you sustain these lower prices and lap this investment in 2027?
John Ferner
OK, thanks for the question. This is John. Let me just start by saying I'm, I'm really pleased with the the quarter for Walmart. This is a good 4:45 in sales and strong operating income growth.
We've we've been investing as you know in the last few years in the strategy to drive a very powerful Omni business and we're proud of the progress. I've been a part of building the strategy for a year and it's great to see it come together.
We want to be really flexible for customers whether they shop at the counter or at the curb or delivery to their home. Customers are looking for value and our team is executing that well. We had a good quarter in in Walmart US International and Sam's Club.
And the result of that is we've have seen share gains and we're pleased with share gains across the business. There was an impact in pharmacies we talked about from MFP. I'm putting that aside, the third quarter, the second quarter, excuse me, for Walmart US is the best second quarter we've had in the last three years. So we're proud of the performance.
And as all these pieces come together with this marketplace advertising, our membership businesses, it's important to recognize that these businesses work together, they're reinforcing and they further develop our ability to serve customers with value.
So on price specifically, as John David mentioned, we invested in price in the second quarter. We we talked about the at the end of the first quarter that customers are feeling some pressure. So we are, we're proud of our investments.
We're very thoughtful about those investments, the categories they went in, the timing of those investments and we'll manage them across the two quarters. Our merchants have a lot of experience delivering value, mixing out.
They are they're doing this in a way that as I said result in share gains, are really pleased with the share gains that we saw in the food categories. And those type of share gains tend to be durable over time.
So specifically as we look forward, if you take the two quarters you put those together, we're pleased with our our forecast in terms of sales. We're pleased with the forecast in terms of operating income growth. You heard John David mention what those two are.
And our, our purpose and mission is always to save people money and live better. And that's what we'll continue to focus on and we'll do everything we can to keep prices as low as we can for for customers throughout the rest of the year.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Simeon Gutman, Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Simeon Gutman
Hey, good morning, everyone. So I guess I have two parts. The 1st is the lower income consumer has faced pressures for the better part of several years. Is there anything different even about this environment with gas prices that you think has accumulated to weigh on them further?
And then it's related to the prior question and I think some of John David's prepared remarks, the elasticity function to some of these price investments and rollbacks. I know you mentioned you see it immediate. Can you give us some context? And then is there traditionally a little bit of a lag where you start to see a more, I guess, more impactful response over the next, call it six months?
John Ferner
Thank you, Simeon. This is John. David, Thanks for your question. We we no doubt and it sort of states the obvious of seeing some incremental pressure on the consumer relative to the beginning of the year with higher fuel prices.
As you go through month by month in the last quarter, you can tell when fuel prices increase and got got above $4.00 and perhaps there's a psychological impact to that, that there are choices that consumers are making.
So June was a little more obvious as as we look at the quarter in terms of customers making trade-offs and and it's why we have leaned so heavily into lower prices. You're right there. There is elasticity on on these items that we roll out. We talked about 11,000 rollbacks. We're really proud of that and how we're trying to be there for our customers and members during this period of time.
But I think very importantly in your question, there is a lag to this there there is a bit of a cumulative benefit that comes when you lower prices. And so you don't necessarily expect to have that offsetting benefit to the lower prices in the immediate.
And so as you know, being very familiar with our business, we're not managing our business for 1/4. We're managing our business on a on a multi year basis to to play, to win. We feel confident in our strategy and and what we're doing here and importantly the market.
Share gains that we've seen in these recent periods, they're durable. We're seeing the, the, that we're keeping those market share gains and it's why I think we've been perhaps as bold as we have to, to continue to go after that.
John David Rainey
And Simeon with, with the the rowbacks and the other investments, we, we exited the first quarter as we mentioned earlier at about 7000 rowbacks, it's normally about 5:00 at the end of the quarter, we had 11.
And when you take rollbacks and consumable categories like food, you, you tend to see first a unit increase and we saw transactions in units grow in the quarter and then that does create a temporary deflationary effect.
But as the units grow overtime, particularly in food, then the share gains come through and we were really pleased with the recent share report in food is one of the strongest reports we've had in some time.
So we're pleased with those. But it, but again, we'll, we'll we'll handle this thoughtfully. Our hope and intention always is that rollbacks can become permanent price increases wherever possible. We have a line of sight to those and for any that we see that we aren't getting return and we'll manage them carefully.
We're going to be thoughtful about how we invest all of our funds and all the funds available. Ultimately, we're trying to reinforce the everyday low price model and save customers money.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Greg Malik with Evercore ISI. Please receive your question.
Greg Malik
Oh, hi, thanks. I'd love to follow up on on where you're seeing tariff rates going forward. Are the effective rates under the new sections coming in at the higher or lower than IEPA? And then my follow up is on the baseline into into 27, should we think about operating income still growing up to 2X sales as we see that the traffic results from the price investment? Thanks.
John David Rainey
The assumption that we have with respect to tariff rates is basically at the level that we're experiencing today stands true for where fuel prices are as well. So if there's some improvement in fuel prices, I think that's a benefit to our forecast on operating income for 2027 and the outer years.
Look, we have a lot of confidence in our ability to continue to grow the bottom line at a much faster rate than we have the top line. But I, I don't want to miss the top line growth to, to, to have what is, you know, roughly 3/4 of a trillion dollars of a revenue base and be able to grow at 456 percent a year that that's meaningful growth.
What's notably different though, is how profitable that growth is. And so like, let's step back for a second and just think about the US comp. US comp is at 2 1/2%. I think the right way to think about that is, is really more 3 1/2% when you adjust for health and Wellness.
But just take it face value at 2 1/2 US comp, we grew operating income 10% XX tariffs. That's 4X the level of revenue growth. We haven't done that level of profit growth relative to the US comp in two decades. Our business is fundamentally changing.
If you look at the profit drivers of our business, almost half of the growth came from areas like membership, advertising, marketplace and and we expect this to continue. In fact, I think there's a line of sight to see an improvement in incremental margins as we go forward.
Right now we're we're generating some roughly double digit low double digit incremental margins, but the growth drivers of our business are as intact as they ever have been.
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Brad Thomas with Key Banc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Brad Thomas
Good morning. I want to ask about the health and Wellness category and appreciate all the detail you shared this morning. It's really been a outsized contributor to growth over the last few years and still seems to have a a bright outlook.
I was hoping you could speak to that multi year outlook and maybe how to think about the impact of Fair pricing particularly as we look at over a couple of years here. Thank you.
John Ferner
Hey, Brad, as we mentioned there, there definitely has been an impact in in prior years it was a it was a tailwind and it was headwind in the quarter. That's on slide 14 in the supplemental materials.
So we need to provide the transparency we can but but we do not want it at all signal that we are unpleased with the health and Wellness business. Lower prices help over the long term. We have a legacy of lowering prices and pharmacy back to the $4.00 generics which has been exciting.
But I'm going to have Dave talk about the business overall. We're we're really energetic about not only the underlying performance of health and Wellness, but but health and Wellness customers, pharmacy customers, they spend more and I think there's some really important detail that Dave's going to add.
Dave Gugina
Absolutely, John, we feel very good about the underlying momentum in the health and Wellness business. Prescription volumes continue to grow or gaining market share and customers are responding strongly to the convenience that we're building around pharmacy.
I do want to highlight health and Wellness these this customer cohort is incredibly important for us when someone becomes a health and Wellness. Customer, they spend on average three times more than the average Walmart customer and when they begin using pharmacy delivery in addition to being a health and Wellness customer that almost double S yet again.
So we have a very unique opportunity to connect our our pharmacy expertise, our digital capabilities and our local fulfillment network to make healthcare more convenient and accessible while deepening our relationship with these customers.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Michael Laser with UBS. Please receive your questions.
Michael Laser
Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. You articulated a lot of confidence that the Walmart US comp is going to accelerate as the lag impact from these price investments start to gain traction.
So A, have you already started to see that? And B, if that does not happen, what are you thinking about in terms of incremental price investments from here in order to drive the top line as you move not only to the back half, but also in the 2027, especially as the benefit of all these tax refunds state? Thank you so much.
John Ferner
Hey Michael, good morning. You know, first everyday low price is, is a philosophy that builds trust with customers and we're we're proud to offer a value on a basket of goods that's predictable, it's consistent over time.
So when we have the opportunity to lower prices, of course that is always going to be our bias to do that. But we always need to balance our price investments relative to what we're seeing in the market and with the commitments we made on our forecast, including operating income overtime.
So we'll continue to work through those. I I do think it's also important to step back and just think about the business model in total. John, David mentioned the growth in things like membership, advertising, data fulfillment services. We built a much more durable and resilient model that gives us optionality over time.
And we're proud of our price gaps. Of course, we'll defend those. We're proud of the rollback count. We have the rollback count as as we mentioned started really late July. July was a stronger month.
In the month of June, we're pleased with the way back to school and back to college have started. So we'll monitor overtime and we have a great merchant team that will of course mix out categories and we'll look at these investments carefully one at a time.
Ultimately want to do what we want to do is like what Dave said in pharmacy, we want to have a business that you can depend on whether you're shopping at the counter, you're shopping at the curb, you're shopping at home. And we want to provide the most flexibility we can for our customers.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Chris Nardone with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Chris Nardone
Great, thank you and good morning, team. Can you refresh us on the messaging around incremental margins coming out of your digital business given the momentum we're seeing there?
And then as we think ahead to next year, how should we think about your plan to lap these rollbacks and price investments you are making today and still make sure you're driving consistent, you know traffic to your stores? Thank you,
John David Rainey
Chris, I'll take that. Let me let me start with the second part of your question, you know, lapping 19% EPS growth next year, what will be a challenge. So you know, again like we're we're managing our business on a on an annual, if not a multi year basis, but feel really good about what's in store for the the next year and the and the years to come.
But on the incremental margins which I as I noted kind of in my previous answer, I think that's a big part of the story for us. We just we continue to see these growth areas of our business that are driving more benefit to the bottom line.
We've not really committed to any certain number around the incremental margins in our business. But if you look back over the last you know call it six quarters or so generally USE commerce incremental margins have been in that high single digit to low double digit range.
A couple quarters ago I was asked a question about the opportunity for that to improve and over time. And I I think I was maybe a little bit more guarded at that point.
But when when we see things like our advertising business that continues to grow at a 40% clip on a much higher base, that actually gives us confidence in the ability to maybe see incremental margins even go higher.
And so like what do you have to believe to have incremental margins go higher? Well, advertising growth would need to outpace our e-commerce growth and that's actually what we've been seen and not by a small margin, by a large margin on a larger base.
And with the acquisition of Vibe, this gives us a new addressable market that we didn't have before in these small and medium sized merchants. And so we we're we're very excited about the opportunity there.
Advertising though is just one aspect of what we're doing. I don't want to solely point to that as is the only opportunity. That we have here as we continue to add businesses that complement the diversified portfolio of offerings that we have today that generate these higher margins, it's very attractive to us.
The key benefit of digital growth is being able to grow at a very low marginal cost. You know, John has talked a lot since he's come on about this platform approach that we're taking. We're we're doing all the same things that we're doing in the US and our other markets around the world.
Mexico is a really good example. You know, we look at Mexico today and you know, it's the same playbook that we implemented in US five years ago and we're super excited about some of the early progress that we're seeing there.
So we think we have a tremendous opportunity to to continue to change and see our margins drift up over time. Last thing I'll say on this, obviously, I have some passion around this point, but you know, it's not just that our incremental margins are growing.
They're growing at twice the rate of the overall margin of the business. And I think that shows sort of how the earnings complexion of our business and the durability of that growth that we have will play into the future. So very excited about it.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Christopher Horvers with JP Morgan. Please receive your question.
Christopher Horvers
Morning. Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. So you know if you look at the the category performance relative TO1Q and the Walmart U.S. business grocery continue to grow that mid strong mid single digits well above the market and it was Gen. merch that actually slowed.
So, you know, could you help us think about how much of that slow down in Gen. merch was stimulus related versus, you know, gas prices affecting that lower end consumer? And then if you, if you look back for the past few years, you've seen a consumer that has shown up around events and to what extent have you seen that, that that the impact of a back to school start to drive some lift in that Gen. March business, even even considering, you know, where gas prices sit today? Thanks so much,
John David Rainey
Chris, Why don't I start and then maybe hand it over to Dave for a little more color. I, I think no doubt the first quarter benefited from the stimulus payments related to tax refunds. And, and we acknowledge that on the last call.
It's, it's tough to you know, determine how much you ascribe to what's going on in your business versus the overall macro environment. But I think we we definitely benefited some from that.
And then as we go into the second quarter, we saw gas prices peak at higher, higher prices than what we saw in the first quarter. I think all of that impacts the results.
But you know, again, when you look at the the core business and the fact that you know, our value proposition I think is as strong as ever. I feel really good about how we're performing and what the outlook is.
Back to school, back to college, back to school for much of the country is about a week later this year. So it's probably a little early to conclude anything on that. But I will say that back to college has gone exceedingly well. Like what we're really pleased with with what we're seeing there.
You asked about general merchandise categories like we have right now, like one of the the brands that we're selling private brand item is Wonder Nation for kids. It's the, it's the largest kids fashion brand in the US today.
So like we, we love our offering. We certainly recognize that the share gains that we're getting, notably from higher income consumers are in part because of the assortment that we have and that was part of the reason that our inventory went up.
The fact that we've got, you know, more elevated brands, more more expensive merchandise that appeal to a broader cohort of customers is affecting our business and our results. Dave.
Dave Gugina
Yeah, John. Dave, what I would add is we're very pleased with the team's progress in general merchandise. We are seeing strength in style, We're seeing strength in trend, We're seeing strength in fashion and toys in fashion.
I'm really excited about some of our private brands scoop free assembly. We're seeing triple digit comps in those areas. When it comes to back to college, Decor outperformed across the back to college home business areas to call out would be candles, throws, rugs and lamps. Those all posted double digit and triple digit comps.
And then when it comes to back to school, as John David mentioned, this is where we shine. Walmart sells roughly 50% of total industry school supplies from a unit standpoint over the season and we're very pleased with where we are at this point in the year.
Customers are responding to just absolutely fantastic investments in price. We have a list of 14 key items that are priced less than what we saw in 2019. Great examples are Pen and Gear crayons for $0.25 or our Pen and gear #2 pencils for $0.92.
Those prices are resonating with customers and we're seeing it in traffic, ticket and unit volume all growing.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Christina Katai with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Christina Katai
Hi, good morning and thank you for taking the question. So I also wanted to focus on the price investments from a return perspective, right. You noted 50% sequential increase in Robox, I believe 11,000 items, which might be a new record for Walmart.
So I wanted to ask if you could speak to the performance of the incremental rollbacks, the metrics and the payback. That determine whether an investment becomes permanent. And maybe just frame up for us just if, if you can, just how much of the current rollback portfolio is meeting those return thresholds? Thank you,
John Ferner
Christina. Throughout the year. We, we have it have stated that our intention would be to invest in price where possible and any refunds that we had, we would prioritize price investments and that's what we did in the quarter.
Categories like is an example like the meat department prices have been higher and we know that customers have needed relief. So we invested in in ground beef and other areas that were really important to the customer and we'll watch those over the course of the time.
A rollback has a start date, it has an end date. We'll watch the unit movement. We'll understand the effect on the category. I'm importantly, the result is we're seeing share gains and share gains are ultimately the way we would judge how we're doing relative to the other businesses that are out in the market.
In terms of the quantity, I don't know if it is the highest ever, but it is a high number. It's it's the highest I can remember at least in recent times. And it is a reflection of the work that the merchants have done.
It's a reflection of where we're in the market and it's a reflection of the funds that we had available to be able to invest in price. The timing of those were late in July and and they will continue into the second quarter.
And that's why John, David mentioned earlier, you should think of the second and third quarter together in terms of, of both sales and operating growth and we'll measure it appropriately.
We're, we're, we're not investing just for the sake of doing it. We're, we're doing this because we think it has a lasting durable impact on the way customers perceive us. And what we're trying to do ultimately with everyday low price and rollbacks is drive trust.
It's a probably a bit too early to call how many of these will be per minute. We'll manage that and and we'll work with with our suppliers and determine whether that's possible.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Bob Durable with BTIG. This is you through question.
Bob Durable
Hi, good morning. Just a couple of questions around I think inventory are there you know pockets of concern on your inventory levels at all you mentioned you know inflation impacting the inventory. Can you just also address like your inflationary, you know expectations, you know for the remainder of the year throughout the business?
John Ferner
Bob, generally we we've seen a pretty low inflationary environment throughout the year. We're between 1 and 2% in total and the rollbacks we think can help over this quarter in the last few months. So I generally not any, any big concerns right now in inflation. Fuel costs are probably the one thing that of course we're watching because of the magnitude of it. And hopefully those, those can come down over time on inventory.
It's, it's something we watch really carefully. I've, I've been in it in the company over 33 years. I've been a merchant and operator and it can drive so many things from from sales to markdowns, cash flow. As you know, when you step back and look at the categories, and I'm going to talk about Walmart US just for a second, because that's the majority of our inventory.
The merchandise areas are in good shape where we're up anywhere from 1:00 to 4:00. We have some investments in four deployment. Fuel costs are a bit higher, so that's inflated and we have some manufacturing in the inventory.
But when you look at the categories, most are between 1:00 and 4:00. The only thing that's at that high end is consumables, which is fast moving. So as we sit here today, I don't have any big concerns about inventory.
If anything, there were a couple categories I think in June and July where we're a bit light on inventory and we'll manage that and we'll react appropriately based on on what we're seeing from customers.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Kelly Bania with BMO. Please proceed through your question.
Kelly Bania
Kelly, your line is live to ask a question. Hi, thanks for for taking our questions. Wanted to just circle back on the topic of, of tariff refunds. And I'm curious just how you are communicating this to your customers and and membership base to ensure you're generating the ROI that you expect from these investments?
And are you seeing others across the retail spectrum also reinvest those or do you expect them to also follow suit? And if you can also include just the thought process about. Kind of allocating those investments between grocery and general merchandise presumably generated, you know, on the general merchandise side, but sounds like some going into into the grocery side of of the store. So just more more details on the the tariff refunds.
John Ferner
Kelly, we we've invested across the business in the store today you'll store being the site and the physical store. You'll see a combination of rollbacks across food, general merchandise, consumables, fashion. There were some seasonal rollbacks. There are other items where there are ongoing replenishable items.
So we're, we always try to invest in a mix and we're not trying to, to, to take the investment and heavily weight it to a certain category. We know customers are looking for a variety of things across the basket at a time like back to college and back to school.
As you heard from Dave earlier, we think about decor and outfitting A dorm. Then there's the school supplies, the school lunches. And so you'll see it throughout the store. The, the, the signing in the store, we feel great about the stores are doing a really good job signing it.
And then on our homepage, you'll see at the top left, the first one of the first tiles right there on the top is rollback some more. It's always present. So we'll continue to communicate value any way that we can. We're proud of the reductions and it's helpful for customers as we get into the back half.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Paul Lashway with Citigroup. Please receive your question.
Paul Lashway
Hey, thanks guys. Just on the price investments, could you just talk about how that's framing your comp assumptions from a traffic verse ticket perspective in the second-half? Sorry if I missed that earlier.
Also curious on the OpEx growth in the US is up 7%. Were there any timing shifts that impacted that? Are the liability claims coming in a bit above what what you thought? Just curious how we should think about that line item and how it will grow in the second-half of the year? Thanks.
John Ferner
Sure. Let me take the first part on, on the composition of the comp. It was positive to see. It was great to see in the quarter that we grew in transactions. That's true at Walmart, that's clear Sam's Club, it's true in international.
So we see customer traffic growing around the world and we also had positive unit growth and in both of those combined, that's the really the two things we talked about on a weekly basis. We start every Monday around the world in markets with it, something we call our trade meeting and we talked about customer sentiment and how many customers we were able to serve, how many new customers we met, the units that we grow. So we look at both of those.
When you make investments in, in categories like we did across the the all the SBUS, you tend to see faster sales in categories like general merchandise in terms of dollars in food and consumables. You take the prices down. The prices then are, are lower than they were.
UC units grow, grow and then over a few weeks, a few months, that's when you start to see the more lasting impact in food and consumables. Your shoppers don't necessarily buy more food because they see lower prices.
But over time, what we're trying to do with rollbacks and and low prices is build trust with customers. We want customers to know they can trust us for a low price on a basket of goods overtime deliver the the way they want, whether it's at the curb, it's at the counter or it's at their home.
John David Rainey
Yeah, Paul on on SG and a let me address that in a couple parts. One of the bigger drivers was depreciation. Depreciation is related to the CapEx that we've had this really been around supply chain automation and addressing speed and and look we are really pleased with the results that we're seeing.
Just in the current quarter, the number of units that we delivered in less than 30 minutes doubled from a year ago. 70% of all of our e-commerce orders are delivered same day or better. That doesn't come without the investments that we've made. So like what we're really pleased there.
We did have some pressure on what we're calling some of the self insurance items and the two categories that I would put in there are claims as you asked about, but also group health. And if you take the first half of the year, about 2/3 of the increases from group health.
And, and what's happening there is our attrition has gone down quite appreciably in some cases. And by the way, this is a really good thing for our business. We want more seasoned tenured associates serving our customers and members. But with attrition going down the the number of enrollees in that plan has increased.
So given the size company or we've seen a little bit of pressure there. The last thing I'll say is from any 12:45 to the next, sometimes you lean in a little bit more to investments in the business. And while I did not call that out in my prepared remarks, I think this this quarter falls into that category where we felt like it was prudent to to make some of those investments that hopefully benefit the back half of the year.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Jehan Ma with Bernstein. Please proceed with your question.
Jehan Ma
Thank you for for fitting me in. I wanted to follow up on the Walmart US. Brick and mortar comp and appreciate the comment that you were saying there's a bit of a pharmacy headwind in there.
Also wondering if you're seeing any impacts from, you know, higher gas prices and, and people may be driving less to stores and maybe the the greater adoption of pharmacy delivery. Just trying to parse out how much of that is maybe some transitory impact versus a more structural shift in the channel. Thank you.
John Ferner
So let me start with the with the the first part on, on the stores and and I want to be really clear, stores are an asset. They certainly have an impact and handing back the quarter because of pharmacy which which weighs heavily on the store comp. The majority of the business is in store, but we're really pleased also the delivery of the business.
But when you step back and you think about stores and their role in the Omni business, they are an asset because they position inventory, they position associates within 10 miles of 95% of the country.
So that things you've heard this morning about fast delivery, accuracy, flexibility, shopping in you any way you want, they wouldn't come to life without our stores. Now historically if you go back a few years, we had a store channel, we had an E com channel. They were independent, they were vertical.
So you could look at where you, where you sold the cost of each, we could measure profitability of each. But as we blended those together, what we're trying to do is say, think of us in terms of the top line, the bottom line, we'll manage the middle and we'll be flexible for customers any way we can.
And, and then the way that these get categorized, it's really where you decide to pay. If you pay on your phone for pickup, it's an e-commerce order and it's not a store order, but the store does the work, the store fulfills it, a fast delivery under 30 minutes.
What you're actually doing is you're paying on your phone and you're having someone go shop for you and bring it to you. The store is fulfilling that inventory. So just again, stepping back and thinking about stores, there is more volume going through stores today than there ever has been and it's growing.
As a as a former store manager a couple decades ago, I'm just in awe of all the things that the stores are doing to serve customers. They have so many things going on. They're executing, they're flexible and it is a really important part of the overall business.
We'll watch all the channels. We'll make sure the store experience is great. We're investing in new stores. We're investing in remodels and are investing to sure that the stores are Omni enabled so that they can be support and provide whatever we need for the e-commerce business. Thank you.
Operator
The next question is in the line of Seth Sigmund, Barclays just to see with your question.
Seth Sigmund
Hey, good morning everyone. I wanted to follow up on the Walmart US comp. So when we look at the average ticket, it does seem like it's running a little bit below inflation now and that's been happening for the last couple of quarters.
I realize a lot can contribute to ticket, but how is the composition of the basket changing? Are you seeing trade down? Are you seeing any big category makeshift? Are you seeing a shift to maybe smaller ticket items? Anything transitory, How would you sort of frame that? Thanks so much.
Dave Gugina
Yeah, we, we, we continue to see broad based share gains across many categories. Our strategy is working and therefore we're gaining share in grocery sales increased mid single digits with strong unit volume growth and and continued market share gains.
As I noted areas that I'd call on that business. One, we use some of the investments refunds that we got to invest into the grilling basket this summer, which fed eight people for under $40.00 with 13 of those items priced 16% below last year.
And we're also offering incredible quality for great value with our Better Goods brand, which is now a billion dollar brand for us. And then to, to go back-to-back to school, we're we're bringing food into that play as well, including a new back to school lunch basket with 10 high protein lunches for under $2.00.
So that's just an example of a space where we're gaining traffic, we're gaining ticket size and units are going up and those investments are driving that momentum. Thank you.
Operator
At this time, we've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to management for closing remarks.
John Ferner
Yeah, first, again, I want to thank our associates for the work they did in the quarter and the things they do for our customers every day. And I want to thank you for taking the time and interest in the company.
And I'll, I'll just close where I started. This is a good quarter for Walmart. Sales were over 5%, operating income up 74 without the the benefit of the refunds. It was another strong quarter. I feel great about the way we're positioned.
We've been investing in a strategy that delivers an Omni business model across markets. I'm really excited about the extension of platforms into the international businesses. There's a lot of progress. The teams are moving with speed.
And when you just step back and look at the business that we have in the business we're building, it's very durable. It's reliable with there a lot of things that we can do, we couldn't do in years past.
Another strong quarter in e-commerce, another strong quarter. And marketplace advertising, we're seeing more and more people choose Walmart Plus and it's exciting to see Walmart Plus launch in Canada.
So over time, I am more optimistic than I have been about the business model and I look forward to continue to see all the pieces come together as we move forward. Thanks again for again for your time and interest in Walmart.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference.
Details at Walmart IR
Tips: The content presented above were generated by AI language model with publicly available information and auto-generated subtitles from third-party. The above material does not represent the position of Futu and shall not constitute any investment advice. Futu makes no express or implied warranties or representations regarding the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the information shown in the above content.
Risk Disclaimer: The above content only represents the author's view. It does not represent any position or investment advice of Futu. Futu makes no representation or warranty.Read more
Comments (6)
to post a comment
11
2