The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Walmart Inc (NYSE:WMT). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Consumer Defensive company by 0.48% to 131.57 million shares with purchase of 0.62 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 4.89% valued currently at $20.74 billion. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.42 million to 65.0 million shares. And SSgA Funds Management, Inc. has lifted its position by 6.94% or 4.17 million shares – to 64.24 million shares.
Currently, there are 2.69B common shares owned by the public and among those 1.44B shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 176 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 54 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 784,687 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 122 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 23,660,644 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Walmart Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Government Pension Fund – Global. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 46.45 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $7.32 billion. The company bought an additional 30636.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 1.73% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 47038.0 shares to see its total holdings expand to 34.83 million shares valued at over $5.49 billion and representing 1.29% of the shares outstanding. Government Pension Fund – Global sold -1.9 million shares to bring its total holdings to over 17.99 million shares at a value of $2.84 billion. Government Pension Fund – Global now owns shares totaling to 0.67% of the shares outstanding.
The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 0.60% and 2.54% over the past three months. WMT shares are trading 3.27% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 15.84% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $136.09 and touched a high of $169.94 over the same period. WMT has an average intraday trading volume of 7.78 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 2.19%, 3.12%, and 3.73% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Walmart Inc (NYSE: WMT) shares accounts for 34.56% of the company’s 2.69B shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 17.83%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 47.15% and 16.80% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $438.30B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.49. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 27.03, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $6.02. The company has a PEG of 3.25 and a Quick Ratio of 0.23 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.88. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 1.08% over the week and 1.02% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Walmart Inc (WMT) will achieve an EPS of $1.63 for the current quarter, $1.59 for the next quarter and $7.05 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $1.55 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $1.69. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $1.71 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 2.73%, and 9.41% over the next financial year. EPS should grow at an annualized rate of 8.32% over the next five years, compared to 5.43% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the WMT, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. HSBC Securities stated their Buy rating for the stock in a research note on September 22, 2023, with the firm’s price target at $200.
