Walmart, the Consumer Defensive sector company, was revisited by a Wall Street analyst today. Analyst Simeon Gutman from Morgan Stanley maintained a Buy rating on the stock and has a $135.00 price target.
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Simeon Gutman has given his Buy rating due to a combination of factors linked to Walmart’s emerging role in agentic, AI-enabled commerce. He highlights that Walmart’s Sparky assistant will soon connect directly with large language models so that, when shoppers select Walmart within an AI search experience, Walmart can fully control recommendations, advertising, and checkout, creating a seamless, closed-loop transaction path that should support both sales growth and higher-margin media revenue.
He also underscores Walmart’s competitive edge in this new embedded LLM environment, noting its strong position on price, delivery speed, assortment breadth, and customer trust, all reinforced by AI-driven inventory placement that improves local availability and fulfillment. Finally, he points out that Walmart’s performance-based retail media model, combined with greater top-of-funnel control via Sparky, provides an incremental, less cannibalistic monetization channel, reinforcing the investment case for the stock.
According to TipRanks, Gutman is a 4-star analyst with an average return of 3.8% and a 59.92% success rate. Gutman covers the Consumer Cyclical sector, focusing on stocks such as AutoZone, Best Buy Co, and Acushnet Holdings.
In another report released on February 27, Bank of America Securities also initiated coverage with a Buy rating on the stock with a $150.00 price target.