Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, February 20th, and I'm your host, Kim Conn. Our top story so far,

Walmart's future guidance is spooking investors and shares are sharply lower. While Q4 results topped analysts' expectations,

Outlook, quote, assumes a generally stable consumer and continued pressure from its mix of products

and formats globally. The expectation for Q1 sales to be up 3 to 4% should result in EPS between

57 and 58 cents. That's down 3 to 4 cents from a year ago

and below the consensus estimate of 65. For full fiscal year 26, Walmart also expects sales

to improve 3 to 4 percent, translating to $698.1 billion at the midpoint with EPS between

250 and 260. This is also less than Wall

Street's expectations for EPS of 276 on $705.14 billion in sales. Shares did come off their

lows, however, during the earnings call where CEO Doug McMillan said, once you take the noise

out of guidance, we're in a great spot to start the year as we grow profits faster than sales.

The sell side also offered support.

Jeffrey's analyst Corey Tarlow said,

we think Walmart is setting up 25 to be a year of beats and raises,

similar to 24.

Morgan Stanley, Simeon Gutman said,

Street estimates are likely to be revised down this morning.

Similar to fiscal year 2025, we would expect a path of outperformance in fiscal year

26 and ultimate EPS power exceeding the initial outlook. Walmart also raised its dividend

by 13% to 23.5 cents per share. Among other active stocks, you heard on Wall

Street breakfast about Palantir's dive in the previous session on potential defense spending cuts,

...