Profitability margins
Walmart income statement: 3.07% margin
Ten filed years of Walmart's income statement against its 2026-09-07 sector cohort: net margin just above the median, return on assets at the third quartile.
By Javier SanzPublished
Founder of ValueScreener. Built Ninety Nine, a securities services provider, and sold it to a tier-one global bank; ran operations and internationalization at Alpaca, the brokerage API.
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Walmart's net margin has not been above 3.1 percent in any of the ten fiscal years on file, which leaves it just above the median of the 2026-09-07 consumer defensive cohort. Its return on assets on the same data sits at the third quartile of that cohort. Both statements are true and they are usually treated as though they cannot be.
Ten filed years
Every row is the figure in Walmart's annual report for that fiscal year. Walmart's fiscal year ends in January, so fiscal 2026 was filed in March 2026.
| Fiscal year | Gross | Operating | Net | 10-K filed | Accession |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 25.65 | 4.69 | 2.81 | 2017-03-31 | 0000104169-17-000021 |
| 2018 | 25.37 | 4.08 | 1.97 | 2018-03-30 | 0000104169-18-000028 |
| 2019 | 25.10 | 4.27 | 1.30 | 2019-03-28 | 0000104169-19-000016 |
| 2020 | 24.69 | 3.93 | 2.84 | 2020-03-20 | 0000104169-20-000011 |
| 2021 | 24.83 | 4.03 | 2.42 | 2021-03-19 | 0000104169-21-000033 |
| 2022 | 25.10 | 4.53 | 2.39 | 2022-03-18 | 0000104169-22-000012 |
| 2023 | 24.14 | 3.34 | 1.91 | 2023-03-17 | 0000104169-23-000020 |
| 2024 | 24.38 | 4.17 | 2.39 | 2024-03-15 | 0000104169-24-000056 |
| 2025 | 24.85 | 4.31 | 2.85 | 2025-03-14 | 0000104169-25-000021 |
| 2026 | 24.93 | 4.18 | 3.07 | 2026-03-13 | 0000104169-26-000055 |
The gross margin moved 1.51 percentage points across the whole decade, from 24.14 at its low to 25.65 at its high. The net margin moved 1.77 points, from 1.30 to 3.07, which is a far larger proportional swing on a much smaller base.
The same company against its sector, four ways
The 2026-09-07 distribution build, consumer defensive cohort. Walmart's stored figures equal its fiscal 2026 filed figures.
| Figure | Walmart | p25 | Median | p75 | p90 | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 24.93 | 19.13 | 33.42 | 50.23 | 62.39 | between p25 and the median |
| Operating margin | 4.18 | -4.73 | 4.50 | 11.64 | 19.93 | just below the median |
| Net margin | 3.07 | -4.63 | 2.71 | 8.77 | 15.29 | just above the median |
| Return on assets | 7.69 | -7.17 | 3.34 | 7.70 | 12.76 | at the third quartile |
Three margins that say average, and a return on assets one hundredth of a point below its sector's third quartile.
Nothing in that table is contradictory once you write out what return on assets is. It is net margin multiplied by asset turnover, and Walmart's stored asset turnover is 2.51. Multiply 3.07 by 2.51 and you get 7.71, against the stored 7.69, which is the identity holding to within the rounding of the two published inputs. The sector's median company earns 2.71 cents on a dollar of sales and turns its assets over slowly enough to land at 3.34 percent on assets. Walmart earns 3.07 cents and turns them over 2.51 times.
The comparison that makes the point sharper
Costco, on the same build, in the same sector:
| Figure | Walmart | Costco |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 24.93 | 12.84 |
| Operating margin | 4.18 | 3.77 |
| Net margin | 3.07 | 2.94 |
| Asset turnover | 2.51 | 3.57 |
| Return on assets | 7.69 | 10.50 |
Costco's gross margin is roughly half Walmart's. Its operating margin is lower. Its net margin is lower. Its return on assets is 2.81 percentage points higher.
Every margin says one thing and the return says the other, because the two companies are not running the same trade-off. Read only the income statement and Costco looks like the weaker of the two on every line. The balance sheet is where the difference is.
What this does to a margin screen
A filter written as "net margin above 5 percent" removes both of these companies, and it removes them for a reason that has nothing to do with how much capital either of them earns on. That is a defensible thing to want. It is not usually what the person writing the filter thinks it is doing.
The peer percentile is the reading that survives this. Walmart at the median of its sector on net margin and the third quartile on return on assets is a description of a business model, and both halves of it are needed.
Filed figures from SEC EDGAR. This is a computation on public filings, not a recommendation, and not advice. Past filings do not indicate future results.
What this leaves out
Ten fiscal years is the whole archive, not the whole company.
The sector comparison uses one distribution build, dated 2026-09-07, over companies whose filed statements are on record, deduplicated to one row per company. The four cohorts behind the four rows are different sizes, 172 for gross margin up to 189 for return on assets, because the four figures are held for different numbers of companies.
Return on assets, asset turnover and the three margins are stored figures, which prefer a data vendor's trailing-twelve-month ratio where one is published. Walmart's three margins matched its fiscal 2026 filed figures exactly when checked; the asset turnover was not checked against a filing and is quoted as the stored value.
Two companies are an illustration, not a sample. Nothing here says the pattern generalises, and nothing here is a view on either company or on any security.