Walmart Doug McMillon stock performance vs. Target, Amazon, Costco

When incoming Walmart CEO John Furner steps into the retailer’s top role, he will try to follow up a period of dramatic share growth that many of Walmart’s rivals have failed to match.

Walmart’s stock has more than quadrupled since outgoing CEO Doug McMillon began in the role in February 2014. Across nine of the 12 calendar years when McMillon has been Walmart’s leader, the company posted positive stock returns.

Among Walmart’s main rivals in the retail and grocery business, only Amazon and Costco have had better stock returns since McMillon took the job. Meanwhile, Walmart’s stock has outperformed those of competitors like Target, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Kroger and Albertsons.

McMillon will officially step down at the end of January, but will stay on as executive chairman and advisor. While Furner will face a challenge in replicating the company’s performance under his predecessor, he has been a key catalyst for the company’s success as CEO of its largest sector, Walmart’s U.S. business.

Along with huge gains on Wall Street, McMillon oversaw a significant period of growth for the nation’s largest grocer, which included sharp sales increases, wage hikes for hourly workers and transformation of the nation’s low-price leader into a major e-commerce player. He also steered the retailer through the tumult of a global pandemic, historic levels of inflation and higher tariffs.

Sales during McMillon’s first three years in the role were roughly flat — with revenues of $486 billion, $482 billion and $485 billion in the fiscal years ending January 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Yet those years were followed by steady growth, and those gains have accelerated since 2021, after the Covid pandemic pushed more people to shop online and inflation nudged even wealthier shoppers to seek value. Walmart posted annual revenue of about $681 billion in the fiscal year ended earlier this year, an approximately 40% jump from the company’s annual revenue the first year of McMillon’s tenure.

This year, Walmart is on track to post annual revenues of over $700 billion for the first time ever. Ironically, however, it is also expected to lose its crown as the largest retailer by annual revenue to its biggest e-commerce rival, Amazon.

Earlier this year, Amazon leapfrogged Walmart in quarterly sales for the first time. Compared to Walmart, it has a different mix to its business because of its massive cloud computing, advertising and seller services businesses.

Stock gains by Amazon have outpaced Walmart’s during the years of McMillon’s tenure, with 1,225% share gains by the tech giant compared to a 312% increase by Walmart.

However, Walmart’s performance on Wall Street has far surpassed big-box retail competitor Target‘s across McMillon’s time as CEO. Shares of Target are up about 60% since February 2014, compared to…