Giant retailer Walmart (WMT) landed one major win this week, as new reports declared it the king of retail once more. Its recent expansion into online shopping has won it a lot of new business, and even its stores are seen starting to gain ground again. But this was not quite enough for investors, and shares were down fractionally in Friday afternoon’s trading.
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While the recent concern over the economy prompted some shoppers to pull back, and thus spend more at Walmart, that was not the only thing that gave Walmart a boost. Walmart has recently started pushing into the fields that made its competitors big. For instance, customers who wanted a “fun store experience” as well as exciting products often went to Costco (COST). Meanwhile, online shoppers pointed themselves toward Amazon (AMZN).
But in recent days, Walmart has gained a lot of ground by offering that same fun store experience and online shopping power, which is cutting into the market share its competitors formerly enjoyed often all to themselves. And with more kinds of shopping available, more kinds of shoppers are coming in as well; the well-to-do are starting to take a second look at Walmart, with 36% of high-income shoppers having a “very favorable” impression of Walmart in one study.
Stay Out of the Walmart
But reports also note that some folks are simply no longer welcome in Walmart. A woman from Tennessee named Ashley Cross, reports noted, managed to not only get herself banned from her local Walmart, but from literally every other Walmart in the United States.
Walmart noted that there are, occasionally, times when “…someone is no longer welcome in our stores.” And this was one of those times; the woman in question had been found shoplifting from Walmart stores previously, and thus earned herself a lifetime ban. But she did not take this ban particularly seriously, reports noted, and went back to shoplift again, thus earning her charges of theft and criminal trespass.
Is Walmart Stock a Good Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on WMT stock based on 26 Buys and two Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 87.05% rally in its share price over the past year, the average WMT price target of $107.26 per share implies 2.94% upside potential.
