<figure id="attachment_2623726" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2623726" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-2623726" src="https://media.freemalaysiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/18896b40-walmart.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="500" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-2623726" class="wp-caption-text">Fresh off achieving a US$1 trillion market value earlier this month, Walmart reported solid fourth-quarter results. (Walmart pic)</figcaption></figure>
NEW YORK: Walmart&#8217;s newly installed leadership team on Thursday emphasized plans to build up artificial intelligence integration, lifting shares of the retail behemoth despite a cautious forecast.
Fresh off achieving a US$1 trillion market value earlier this month, Walmart reported solid fourth-quarter results, but projected lower earnings per share in this year&#8217;s first quarter compared with analyst expectations and slower annual revenue growth.
John Furner, who ascended to CEO on Feb 1, praised the results as evidence of Walmart&#8217;s resonance with consumers across income levels.
&#8220;The way we&#8217;re using technology and AI is helping us create great customer solutions, reduce friction, simplify decision making, and pinpoint where our inventory is, all while maintaining the trust we&#8217;ve earned from our customers and members,&#8221; Furner said.
Walmart has seen significant growth in its advertising and e-commerce businesses, with Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey pointing to notable expansion of the company&#8217;s Amazon-like &#8220;Marketplace&#8221; platform for third-party sellers.
&#8220;We want to lean a lot more into growth right now,&#8221; Rainey said.
Walmart on Feb 3 overtook the US$1 trillion valuation marker, a rare occurrence for a brick-and-mortar legacy company that began as a family store in Arkansas in 1962.
Just three other non-tech companies have achieved this valuation: oil giant Saudi Aramco, Warren Buffett&#8217;s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, and pharma company Eli Lilly.
&#8220;Investors have sort of put companies like Walmart, Costco and Amazon into one bucket and the rest of the retailers are in a slower-growth bucket,&#8221; said Arun Sundaram, a senior equity analyst at CFRA Research.
The move came on the heels of Walmart&#8217;s shift late last year to the Nasdaq from the New York Stocks Exchange.
The company has also overhauled its leadership structure, announcing in January a series of appointments, including naming US chief growth officer Seth Dallaire to an equivalent post for Walmart globally.
The move signals Walmart&#8217;s intent to deploy technology-oriented growth programs to Walmart&#8217;s international business.
Profits for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 that ended January 31 were US$4.2 billion, down 19.4 percent from the year-ago level, with the company citing a drop in the value of some equity investments.
Revenues rose 5.6 percent to US$190.7 billion.
Walmart generated 4.6 percent comparable sales growth in its US retail business, reflecting higher sales across grocery, pharmaceuticals and general merchandise.
A company presentation said the figures in the United States were the result of &#8220;broad-based growth across merchandise categories as well as share gains across income tiers, led by upper-income households.&#8221;
Walmart said its &#8220;like-for-like&#8221; inflation came in at 1.1 percent for the quarter in its US division. The company has described the impact of President Donald Trump&#8217;s tariffs as less significant than originally feared.
The company has spotlighted success at reducing shipping costs through automation and pointed to the partnerships with OpenAI and Google&#8217;s Gemini that direct users to Walmart products.
On Thursday, Furner and other executives effused over the capacity of Sparky, an AI assistant on Walmart&#8217;s smartphone application that has lifted order volumes by 35 percent compared with customers who haven&#8217;t used the service.
&#8220;What Sparky can do is help us understand really clearly what it is that you&#8217;re trying to accomplish in your life, whether that&#8217;s a birthday party or a camping trip,&#8221; Furner said.
&#8220;And then we can generate you great, unique solutions&#8221; that save shoppers time, Furner said.
Sparky is an example of &#8220;agentic commerce,&#8221; a growing trend in retail where AI assumes more sophisticated tasks, such as executing weekly supermarket orders based on a consumer&#8217;s history or searching the Internet for the right goods for a holiday meal or a party.
These advances offer both opportunities and risks for retailers, said a report from the CFRA research group last fall.
&#8220;For consumers, agentic commerce should save both time and money,&#8221; CFRA said. &#8220;However, for retailers and suppliers, the implications are more nuanced, given the likelihood of reduced direct interaction with customers and more engagement with other AI agents.&#8221;

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