Walmart continued its retail climb with another stellar earnings report. What I saw is a new CEO who is not letting off the gas. 27% growth in eCommerce—YOWZA!

A few principles clearly stood out:

1 - Advertising is now the franchise. The elevation of Seth Dellaire to Chief Growth Officer for all Walmart, not just in the US, makes the mandate clear: replicate the US advertising and membership success globally.

This is an underrated move as Seth has built advertising businesses at Instacart, Amazon, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. If advertising was core to your strategy, there are not many better people you could find.

Did I mention that one-third of operating income in calendar Q4 2025 came from advertising and membership, with global and US advertising businesses up 37% and 41%, respectively? US ad growth got a big boost from its Marketplace sellers, who were called out.

2 - Automated logistics leads the way. It's hard to overstate the operational level of focus here.

Walmart clearly outlined that its greatest costs are in inventory and labor, and automated logistics takes aim at both. Meanwhile, Walmart Fulfillment Services for marketplace sellers continues to grow (up to 52% of marketplace sales), helping with growth and inventory at the same time.

As much as they talked about "fast delivery" being 3 hours, you could really tell the number they cared about was 30-minute delivery. Look out, Amazon. Can you match this? Who else can even try? (Not FedEx or UPS, I can tell you that).

3 - There are a few consumer warning signs.

While it wasn't a bearish outlook, I noted that Walmart's consumer outlook seemed slightly more sour to me than previous calls. The company clearly separated (as it has done recently) consumers above $100k in income, and those under $50k in income. Those below $50k, many are reported to be living paycheck to paycheck. Sounds like a headwind. On the other hand, households with incomes over $100k account for the bulk of Walmart's rapid growth, particularly in eCommerce, which is now driving the business's future.

One note I took away, even from cash-strapped consumers, is that convenience has become table-stakes. What started as a ploy to attract higher-income consumers has become standard across the portfolio and the foundation of Walmart's entire omnichannel strategy.

4 - Leaning into agentic commerce.

Walmart's Sparky (the antidote to Amazon's Rufus) got most of the press in this earning's call on agentic commerce:

Despite the incrementally greater consumer warning signals, another takeaway I had from earnings was more subtle. Inventory levels declined to less than half of growth, and the CEO lamented that if they had bought inventory more aggressively, their sales could have been even greater.

A Walmart on offense could be bad news for the competition. The company can serve 95% of America in under 3 hours.

Trump Tariff Redux - Keep Moving

Look, stop reading the headlines for a second and let’s look at the top line.

If you spent 2025 in a "wait-and-see" defensive crouch, you weren’t alone—but you most definitely ended up missing a huge opportunity. As part of my NRF keynote this year, I called this the Goliath Paradox. We saw a year of absolute market paralysis where everyone from the C-suite to the warehouse floor was frozen, waiting for the other shoe to drop on consumer behavior and trade policy.

Well, the shoe did drop (is this a third shoe?): the Supreme Court stepped in on February 20th to strike down IEEPA, and the administration immediately pivoted to Section 122. Now we’re looking at a 10% or 15% global baseline surcharge that is fundamentally rewriting the math of your landing costs.

Here is what is actually happening:

The era of safety in scale is officially dead. In the old world, being the biggest player in the room meant you could absorb a few points of margin erosion and move on. Not anymore. Today, size can be a liability because it drags down your Adaptability Quotient (AQ). If it takes you six months to reroute a supply chain out of Ningbo, or to re-price 50,000 SKUs, you’re already underwater.

We’re seeing two distinct camps emerging in this Age of Intelligence. On one side, you have the brands trying to "transparency" their way out of this. They want to put a line item on the receipt saying, "Don't blame us, blame the 10% surcharge."

My take? Good luck.

Unless you’re selling a highly inelastic, must-have product, the consumer doesn't care about your supply chain woes. They care about the price at checkout. If you try to blame a policy shift for a price hike, you’ll find out how little brand loyalty exists when the wallet gets squeezed.

On the other side, the winners are prioritizing motion over perfection. They aren’t waiting for the 2026 midterms or the next SCOTUS ruling. They are diversifying sourcing now—not for the cheapest labor, but for the most resilient path. They are leaning into Agentic Commerce. This isn't just a chatbot; it’s a unified data layer where AI agents actively reroute shipments and adjust pricing in real time based on the latest market conditions.

The paralysis of 2025 was a trap. The companies winning in 2026 aren't the ones with the biggest balance sheets; they’re the ones with the highest velocity. They stand for something — like an Alo or a Skims, and they move fast enough that a tariff is a speed bump, not a brick wall.

Is your business built for scale or for speed? Because in 2026, speed is the only moat that stays filled. Keep moving.