Walmart Inc. matched its highest global ecommerce sales growth rate in two years during Q3 of its fiscal 2025, which ended Oct. 31, 2024. Walmart online sales grew nearly five times faster in Q3 than the retailer’s consolidated revenue growth.
CEO Doug McMillon told investors on the retailer’s earnings call that households earning more than $100,000 accounted for 75% of Walmart’s gains in the quarter.
“In the U.S., in-store volumes grew, curbside pickup grew faster, and delivery sales grew even faster than that,” McMillon told investors. “Becoming more convenient for our customers and members is helping drive our growth.”
In Q3, Walmart consolidated revenue grew to $169.58 billion. That’s up 5.5% from $160.80 billion in the same period the year before.
At the same time, comparable sales in the U.S. grew 5.3%. During the peak of hurricane season in the quarter, Walmart had closed 400 stores, Sam’s Clubs and distribution centers, chief financial officer John David Rainey told investors on the earnings call.
He said the company is “realizing benefits from the investments we’ve made in our core omni retail business and seeing improved profitability with newer businesses.”
Walmart is No. 2 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales. It is also No. 9 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of top such marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV).
Walmart ecommerce sales in Q3
In Q3, Walmart global online sales grew 27% year over year.
And in the U.S. specifically, Walmart ecommerce sales grew 22% in Q3.
“Growth in customer transactions and units across stores and ecommerce remained strong,” Rainey said. “Store-fulfilled delivery increased nearly 50% and surpassed $2.5 billion monthly run rate. We’ve now had 12 consecutive months of deliveries above $2 billion.”
Part of that growth came from Sam’s Club express delivery and removing fees for high-enough tier members placing curbside pickup orders.
Internationally, Walmart ecommerce sales grew 43% in the quarter. Walmart online sales penetration grew across all markets, Rainey said, with delivery speed “becoming increasingly important to customers.”
New Walmart and Sam’s Club technology
“We build new tech more effectively than we used to, and we’re doing it with more speed,” McMillon said on the earnings call.
He highlighted the opening of a 150,000-square-foot Sam’s Club in Grapevine, Texas, which features design changes including an expanded area for curbside pickup and delivery orders.
It also features “new category adjacencies, with consumables near the pickup and delivery staging area, and a stronger general merchandise presentation that has improved the sales mix of those categories,” he said. “Boldly, our Sam’s team also eliminated traditional checkouts, so our members can use Scan & Go, and the new computer vision exit technology to exit the club faster.”
Although McMillon said he’s hesitant to speak about artificial intelligence because of how fast the field is growing, he said Walmart is “learning and applying generative AI, AI and machine learning to solve the practical opportunities right in front of us.”
Walmart continues boosting fulfillment and delivery efficiency
Additionally, more than 30% of Walmart online orders have come from customers and Sam’s Club members who elected to pay a convenience fee to receive their delivery in either less than one hour or less than three, Rainey said.
Walmart also continues to make progress in the automation of its supply chain, he added. More than 50% of Walmart fulfillment center volume is automated, which is also twice as much as it was in the same period last year, according to Rainey.
Those factors led to Walmart reaching its third consecutive quarter of reducing U.S. net delivery cost per order by 40%.
In the past year, Rainey said, Walmart’s international segment delivered more than 2.1 billion items for same- and next-day delivery. And Walmart delivered about 45% of those in under one hour, he added.
“As we scale our store fulfilled delivery business and expand our catchment areas, we’ve seen significant improvement in batch density with orders per delivery up 20%,” he said.
Walmart Marketplace sales in Q3
In the U.S., Walmart Marketplace and Fulfillment Services grew 42% year over year in Q3. That’s the fifth straight quarter of more than 30% growth, Rainey said.
The number of sellers on the platform continued to grow double-digits in Q3 as well, and the SKU count is approaching 700 million items, he added.
Walmart Marketplace sales in the beauty, toys, hardlines and home categories all grew more than 20% in Q3.
Check back for more earnings reports. See Walmart’s previous quarterly earnings story here.
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