Tariffs are shifting. De minimis rules are under pressure. And new enforcement could change how retailers operate overnight. If you sell across borders—through ecommerce, marketplaces, or direct—these changes don’t just impact compliance. They impact your pricing, margins, and conversion rates.

Register for our Trade and Tariff webinar series for regular updates.

Everybody is going to lead with the 7.3% revenue print and the 4.1% U.S. comp. Fine. Those are the numbers that move the stock for a day. They are not the numbers that tell you where this company is going.

Here is what I'm watching.

Advertising grew 37% globally. Walmart Connect in the U.S. was up 44% excluding VIZIO. U.S. Marketplace sales jumped close to 50%, the best quarter in ten. Global membership fee revenue climbed 17.4%. Stack those together, and you have the actual Walmart story for FY27: a grocery and general merchandise base throwing off enough traffic to fund a high-margin media, marketplace, and membership business sitting on top of it. The shelves are the cost of customer acquisition. The profit increasingly comes from somewhere else.

That shift shows up in the income statement if you read past the headline. Reported operating income was up 5.0% on 7.1% net sales growth, so they are still spending to grow. GAAP EPS looks gorgeous at $0.67, up 19.6%. But most of the daylight between that and the adjusted number is a fair-value swing on the symbotic stake: a loss a year ago, a gain now. That flip flatters the growth rate, and it isn't store performance. Adjusted EPS, which strips the investment noise out, was $0.66, up 8.2%. That is the cleaner number, and it is good, not spectacular.

Now the part nobody in the press release wants to dwell on: free cash flow was negative $1.9B, down $2.4B year over year. Capex went up $1.7B. Walmart is pouring money into automation, and roughly half of U.S. eCommerce fulfillment center volume now runs automated. I'm fine with this. You don't get sub-three-hour delivery on 36% of store-fulfilled orders for free, and that speed is a real weapon against Amazon. But call it what it is. This is a heavy build year, and the cash statement is telling you so out loud.

The detail that should make every competitor nervous is who is shopping. Share gains were led by upper-income households. The old "Walmart is for people who have no other option" thesis is dead. When the affluent shopper moves into your app in a decent economy, you've taken the customer, not just the trip.

Two pushbacks. Pharmacy ate a roughly 700 basis point hit in Health & Wellness from Maximum Fair Pricing, and that headwind isn't going anywhere. And Sam's Club's operating income was basically flat, up 1.2%, squeezed by delivery costs. The flywheel is real. The fulfillment math underneath it still isn't finished.

The company reiterated full-year guidance and pointedly refused to bake in any IEEPA tariff refunds. Smart. Why promise money the Supreme Court hasn't handed you yet.

Bottom line: the comp is a sideshow. Watch the ads, the marketplace, and the cash burn. That's where this quarter actually gets decided.

If you sell on Walmart's marketplace or buy its ads, the balance of power just tilted further toward the platform. Connect up 44% and U.S. Marketplace near 50% means Walmart owns the traffic and the data, which means it sets the terms.

If you compete with Walmart (Amazon, Target, and the grocers), the upper-income share gain is the real alarm, louder than any comp number. You are no longer fighting over the shopper who has no choice. You are losing the one who does. Price stopped being the wedge. Speed and assortment are.

Here's what the keynotes don't say out loud. Moving to Shopify doesn't fix your business. It gives you a better platform to run your business. Those are different things, and most operators learn the difference the hard way.

While there might be a legitimate debate over whether Mr. Beast is an Enterprise business, there’s absolutely no debate about companies like Reitman’s, LVMH, and Estee Lauder. In the right circumstances, Shopify is absolutely a platform for serious, scaled brands.

The green bag has become shorthand for the whole promise: innovation, speed, and, just maybe, escape from the vendor prison you've been stuck in for a decade. But does that promise rose come with thorns? And if so, how are brands working through any issues they encounter?

The Big Green Bag Of Promise: Enterprise Shopify Webinar Series, sponsored by Avalara, Domaine, and Pattern, attempts to answer all these questions and more.

Scott Lux is VP of Digital Commerce at Stanley 1913. You know the cup. The brand that somehow went from outdoorsy niche to cultural phenomenon. Scott has lived the enterprise Shopify migration from inside a brand that had to grow up fast.

Elara Verret is Chief Digital and Customer Officer at Reitman's — 400 stores across Canada, 3 brands, real omnichannel complexity. She is 3 weeks post-launch.

Renee Halvorson is Chief Marketing Officer at Marine Layer, which scaled from $10M to $100M on Shopify and is now confronting the gap between where the platform started and where the business actually is.

Most ecommerce brands are running 50-70% gross margins and squeezing 10-15% EBITDA out of that in a decent year. Tech costs keep climbing. Media isn't cheap. The era when growth covered every operational sin is over. Most brands aren't doubling anymore. Many are up 5-10%, if that.

These webinars are not sponsored by Shopify but contain real talk by operators.

Register for one webinar and be able to join all 3 - if you can’t attend, we will send you a copy to watch on demand.

Date: June 4, 11, and, 18 2026

Time: 12:30 PM ET

Host: Rick Watson