Walmart

Walmart Inc. is the Bentonville, Arkansas retailer founded by Sam Walton, whose first Walmart store opened in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962, and which grew on an everyday-low-price philosophy into the largest retailer in the world. Walmart operates supercenters, discount stores, Neighborhood Markets and Sam's Club warehouses, alongside one of the largest e-commerce operations in the United States. The company traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1972 until December 8, 2025, and moved its listing to Nasdaq on December 9, 2025, keeping the symbol WMT.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record gives the scale of that era: each week nearly 265 million customers and members visited more than 11,200 stores under 55 banners in 27 countries, plus the company's e-commerce websites. The summary is written under the Walmart Inc. name the company adopted in 2018, dropping 'Stores' to reflect the shift beyond physical retail.

The October 2013 summary records the three-segment structure of the Wal-Mart Stores era — Walmart U.S., Walmart International and Sam's Club — and states the pricing philosophy plainly: everyday low prices, items priced low every day rather than in promotions. That philosophy, more than any single format, is the constant across both summaries.

The range behind the name is groceries, general merchandise and apparel, including extensive own-brand clothing ranges. Its customers are households seeking everyday low prices, in more than 10,000 stores and online worldwide. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Walmart in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Walmart with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Operating — the company transferred its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to Nasdaq on December 9, 2025, keeping the WMT symbol — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking Walmart could see its scale, its headquarters and its own description of its business in a few paragraphs. Those dated descriptions are kept with their dates, because a store count from 2013 or a strategy statement from 2019 is evidence about that year, not about today. The current position is the one given in the snapshot: operating.