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Amazon Dethrones Walmart as the World's Largest Company by

For decades, Walmart held an unchallenged claim to the title of the world's largest company by annual revenue. That era ended this week. Amazon's full-year 2025 revenue of $716.9 billion officially surpassed Walmart's $713.2 billion for its fiscal year ending January 31, 2026 — a symbolic but seismic milestone that reshapes the hierarchy of global commerce. The dethroning was not sudden. Amazon first overtook Walmart in quarterly revenue about a year ago, and the annual crossover had been anticipated for months. But the confirmation, arriving just as Walmart reported otherwise strong fourth-quarter results on Thursday, crystallizes a broader truth: the center of gravity in retail has shifted decisively toward digital platforms, cloud computing, and AI-powered commerce. For investors parsing the two stocks — Amazon trading at $209.44 with a $2.25 trillion market cap, and Walmart at $122.07 with a $973 billion valuation — the question is no longer who is bigger, but which company is better positioned for the next chapter. The milestone also arrives at a pivotal moment for both companies. Amazon is pouring up to $200 billion into AI infrastructure in 2026, while Walmart is navigating a CEO transition and a cautious earnings outlook that spooked Wall Street. The revenue crown may be symbolic, but the strategic divergence underneath it is anything but.

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Earnings Analysis: Walmart Beats on Revenue and EPS but

Walmart Inc. (WMT) delivered a strong holiday quarter on Thursday morning — revenue up 5.6% year-over-year to $190.7 billion, adjusted earnings of $0.74 per share topping the $0.73 consensus — and still watched its stock slide more than 2% at the open. The culprit: a fiscal-year earnings outlook of $2.75 to $2.85 per share that landed well below Wall Street's $2.96 expectation, casting a shadow over what was otherwise a showcase quarter for the world's largest brick-and-mortar retailer. The report, filed before dawn on February 19, marks a pivotal moment for Walmart on multiple fronts. It is the first earnings release under new CEO John Furner, who succeeded Doug McMillon on February 1 after more than three decades at the company. It also arrives just weeks after Walmart crossed the $1 trillion market capitalization threshold, and days after Amazon officially overtook it as the world's largest company by annual revenue — a symbolic passing of the torch that underscores the competitive pressure Walmart faces even as it posts record digital numbers. Investors now confront a familiar tension: Walmart's operating machine has never been sharper, but its premium valuation — trading at roughly 44 times trailing earnings — leaves almost no room for guidance that merely meets expectations, let alone misses them. The question is whether the cautious outlook reflects genuine economic headwinds or the kind of conservative sandbagging that has become a Walmart tradition under new management.

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Retail Showdown: Walmart and Target's New CEOs Inherit

America's two biggest big-box retailers enter a new era under new leadership this month, but the fortunes they've inherited could hardly be more different. On February 1, John Furner took the helm at Walmart and Michael Fiddelke assumed the CEO role at Target — both longtime company insiders, both promoted from within, yet each facing a fundamentally distinct set of challenges and opportunities. Walmart reports its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, February 19, riding a wave of momentum that has pushed its market capitalization past $1 trillion and its stock up 163% over the past five years. Target, which reports on March 3, tells a starkly different story: its shares have fallen roughly 40% over the same period, weighed down by declining store traffic, margin compression, and a string of public relations headaches. As both companies prepare to unveil holiday-quarter results and full-year guidance, Wall Street is focused less on backward-looking numbers and more on one question: can these new CEOs sustain Walmart's dominance and engineer Target's turnaround? The divergence between these two retail bellwethers is more than a stock market curiosity — it's a window into the shifting economics of American consumer spending, the growing power of digital retail platforms, and the widening gap between retailers that have successfully adapted to the post-pandemic landscape and those still searching for their footing.

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