Earnings Forecast | Is Walmart (WMT.US) Q3 earnings expected to exceed expectations? The market is optimistic that its revenue will drive growth

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the world's largest retailer, Walmart (WMT.US), will release financial results for the third quarter ending October 2025 on November 20. The market generally expects that the company's third-quarter revenue growth will drive profit up year over year — analysts expect earnings per share (EPS) of $0.61, up 5.2% year over year; revenue scale will reach US$177.14 billion, up 4.5% from the same period last year.

Notably, in the past 30 days, the market's general expectations for Walmart's EPS for this quarter have risen by 0.17%, reflecting analysts' recent optimism about its profit outlook, which has driven its Earnings ESP (Earnings ESP) to +1.15%, while the current ranking of Zacks is level 3. The combination of the two indicates that Walmart is likely to exceed general market expectations.

According to reports, Earnings Esp (Earnings ESP) is a proprietary predictor developed by Zacks Investment Research. The full name is Expected Earnings Surprise Prediction (Earnings Expected Surprise Prediction), which is used to quantify the probability that a company's actual profit exceeds (or falls below) market consensus expectations.

Judging from historical performance, Walmart's EPS exceeded market expectations in three of the past four quarters, but the actual EPS for the most recent quarter was 0.68 US dollars, slightly lower than the market expected 0.73 US dollars, with an expected difference of 6.85%. Although this history of profit accidents shows that it has performed better than expected for most periods, fluctuations in a single quarter also remind investors to rationally view forecast deviations.

It should be emphasized that profit exceeding expectations is not the only determining factor in the rise or fall of stock prices. In practice, there are often situations where stock profits exceed expectations but fall due to other negative factors, or when profits fall short of expectations but rise due to favorable factors. However, betting on stocks that surpass expectations can improve the probability of success.

Although Walmart's higher Earnings ESP is a positive factor, investors still need to pay attention to other risk points before financial reporting, such as consumer market trends, cost control ability, and macroeconomic environment, to make more comprehensive investment decisions. Currently, the market is awaiting the official disclosure of Walmart's November 20 earnings report to verify the extent to which its profit performance matches market expectations.