Walmart stock bucks tech-led slide as Vizio ad push comes back into focus

29 December 2025

NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 11:28 ET — Regular session

Walmart shares were up about 0.5% in late-morning trading, outpacing a broader dip on Wall Street.
Investors weighed fresh commentary on Walmart’s connected-TV advertising push tied to its Vizio integration.
Traders are watching Fed minutes and weekly jobless claims this week, with Walmart also slated to appear at the ICR conference on Jan. 13 ahead of earnings on Feb. 19.

Walmart Inc’s shares rose on Monday, bucking a pullback in U.S. stocks that was led by heavyweight technology names.

The move matters now because trading is thinning into year-end, when investors often rotate toward steadier, defensive names as they lock in gains and trim risk. The broader market has been wrestling with whether a seasonal “Santa Claus rally” can hold without more help from tech. Reuters

For Walmart, the tape is also reflecting a debate over what drives the next leg of earnings growth: core grocery-led traffic, or higher-margin businesses such as advertising. Fresh remarks on its Vizio tie-up have put that second leg back in view.

Shares were recently up 0.5% at $112.34. They traded between $111.37 and $112.51 earlier in the session, after opening at $111.70.

Rivals were mostly lower. Target fell about 0.8%, Costco slid roughly 0.4%, and Amazon was down about 0.4%.

Wall Street’s main indexes opened the final trading week of 2025 in the red as investors took profits in big tech after last week’s gains, Reuters reported. Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s previous meeting and a weekly reading on jobless claims are the key macro releases in an otherwise data-light week.

In comments published on Sunday by Talk Business & Politics, Walmart U.S. chief growth officer Seth Dallaire pointed to progress integrating Vizio’s operating system with Walmart’s retail reach to build a tighter advertising loop. “The results are clear … this strategic move has paid off,” Dallaire said. Talk Business & Politics

That effort sits inside what the industry calls “retail media” — ads sold by retailers using shopper data — and “connected TV,” or streaming ads shown on internet-enabled televisions. The pitch to brands is “closed-loop” measurement, meaning marketers can better track whether an ad led to a purchase. Walmart Corporate News+1

Walmart completed its $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio in 2024, saying the deal would accelerate growth at Walmart Connect, its advertising business, by pairing Vizio’s SmartCast platform with Walmart’s data and scale.

Investors have watched that strategy closely because ad sales can carry higher margins than traditional retail, potentially cushioning the business when shoppers trade down and merchandising costs rise. The question for 2026 is how quickly those newer revenue streams can grow without distracting from Walmart’s price-led core.

On the calendar, Walmart is scheduled to present at the ICR conference on Jan. 13, and it has set its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings release for Feb. 19.

Until then, traders are likely to keep using the stock as a relative safe haven in a choppy year-end tape, while looking for any incremental read-through on ad growth, e-commerce momentum and post-holiday demand.

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Khadija Saeed is a financial markets reporter at TS2.tech. Her coverage ranges from stocks and technology to emerging industries and developments across global markets. She studied economics and finance at the London School of Economics and worked in market research before becoming a financial journalist. Follow Khadija Saeed on Google News.

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