Walmart’s Tariff Refund Couldn’t Save a Soft Quarter

Walmart’s Tariff Refund Couldn’t Save a Soft Quarter

Thu, August 20, 2026 at 5:32 PM GMT+3 2 min read

BREAKING NEWS

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here.

The federal government mailed nearly identical checks to Walmart and Target this quarter. One of them got applauded. The other got sent to the penalty box.

Walmart's check came to roughly $2.9 billion in tariff refunds, which helped push gross margin to 25.4% and helped the company beat on both revenue and adjusted earnings Thursday. None of that saved the stock, which fell more than 8% the moment investors found comparable sales at 2.6% against the 3.5% the Street wanted. CFO John David Rainey called the business strong. The market called it a miss and moved on.

Target cashed a $994 million version of the same check Wednesday and walked away with the opposite verdict. The refund added $1.65 to a headline EPS of $4.11 that doubled year over year, but strip it out entirely and adjusted EPS still landed at $2.46 against a $2.33 estimate, with comparable sales at 3.8% against 2.4% expected. Target beat with the crutch kicked away. Walmart did not.

One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here.

Here is what both prints are actually teaching. Every major retailer reporting this cycle got the same Customs refund after the Supreme Court's February ruling against IEEPA tariffs, so a one-time windfall stops functioning as a story once every competitor has an identical one sitting on the balance sheet. Investors backed the number out and graded whatever remained. Target's remainder held up. Walmart's was a comp-sales miss wearing a rebate as a costume.

Rainey can keep describing resilient consumers and real wage growth keeping pace. The market already ran his numbers through the same filter it used on Target, and what came out the other side was a retailer charging more per grocery run to fewer people who bothered to show up.