[ad_1]
Bank of America sees Walmart as an emerging leader in artificial intelligence within the retail sector. Analyst Robert Ohmes stuck by his buy rating on shares of Walmart and raised his price objective to $125 per share from $120. That signals approximately 21% upside from Tuesday’s close. Ohmes said Walmart is positioning to be a “leader in ‘agentic’ AI commerce.” Agentic AI uses artificial intelligence agents to autonomously make decisions aimed at accomplishing a specific goal or solve a problem. “WMT’s AI agent Sparky is testing well and will soon start taking ‘agentic’ action vs. just answering Qs (est. in weeks to months),” Ohmes wrote. “While the development of the market is still in very early stages, we see WMT as well positioned to be a leader in ‘top of funnel’ agentic AI commerce given its impressive scale, ability to serve customers both on & offline, unmatched data from 180mn customers and high potential for partnerships with some of the leading LLMs we believe WMT already frequently engages with.” WMT YTD mountain WMT YTD chart Walmart’s current consumer outlook also looks strong, supported by a new co-branded credit card with Synchrony that could further boost membership growth. On top of that, around two-thirds of what the company sells is produced in the U.S., making it the company less vulnerable to higher tariffs. Ohmes also noted that Walmart is increasingly seeing younger customer cohorts embracing private label products. Walmart’s growing presence in the delivery business could also be a substantial boost for the company, Ohmes said. The company’s food delivery business as already profitable, with groceries being delivered to 95% of households within three hours and 25% of customers within 30 minutes. “We believe WMT having large groups of both in-store shoppers & ecom delivery ‘pickers’ is a competitive advantage in speed/freshness vs. peers,” the analyst wrote. “Looking ahead, we expect WMT to accelerate delivery speeds with newer/remodeled stores that have more space for faster and more efficient pick-up/delivery (40k sq. ft. adjacent to the store) and will allow WMT to forward deploy 3P inventory for even faster localized delivery.” ( Learn the best 2026 strategies from inside the NYSE with Josh Brown and others at CNBC PRO Live. Tickets and info here . )
[ad_2]
Source link
