Investors say the transfer of Walmart’s common stock listing to Nasdaq symbolizes Walmart’s intention to be seen as a technology-enabled e-commerce company rather than a traditional discount retailer. On Tuesday, Walmart moved its primary listing from the New York Stock Exchange, where it has traded since 1972, to the technology-heavy Nasdaq, making it the largest company ever to do so. The Bentonville, Arkansas, giant will maintain the same “WMT” trading symbol it has had for the past 50 years. In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday morning, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon cited the company’s technology advances as a key factor in the decision to move to Nasdaq. “Walmart has changed a lot, and we’re trying to make sure everyone knows that,” said McMillon, who plans to retire in January. Walmart was founded on the principles of setting low prices and creating low-margin, high-sale businesses, but recently the $910 billion giant has made strategic moves to transform its business in a more AI-driven direction. Investors such as Nancy Tengler, chief investment officer at Laffer Tengler Investments, told CNBC that Walmart’s foray into artificial intelligence will not be an easy task and will dictate its future focus. “If they want to be seen more as an AI or technology-based company, I think the idea of moving to an exchange is more in line with the company’s forward-looking ecosystem. This is clearly a very intentional move,” Kevin Simpson, founder and CEO of Capital Wealth Planning, said on a call with CNBC. “This is not the Walmart of 10, 20, 30 years ago. This is the Walmart of the future.” In interviews with CNBC Pro, Tengler, Simpson and other investors praised Walmart’s recent efforts to integrate AI systems to improve business productivity. These steps improved inventory automation and helped predict consumer demand, manage logistics, and reduce theft. Even a small initiative, if applied to Walmart’s more than 10,000 stores around the world, could result in huge savings. “By collecting data on customer patterns over the past few years, we can now more accurately predict when certain products will sell better,” Marcus Hansen, portfolio manager at Vontobel, said in an interview. Hansen said Walmart’s use of new technology extends beyond the back of the store, praising the retailer’s efforts to improve the in-store shopping experience by introducing “smart” shopping carts and digital ink displays that can change product prices from a central location. Simpson said Walmart’s growing advertising business is central to the company’s AI story. He said the business is no longer an “afterthought” but the core evidence behind a new “human-driven, technology-driven” story. Simpson said that while the advertising business is still small compared to Walmart’s annual sales, it is highly profitable and is growing many times faster than the company’s core business. “Of strategic importance, advertising is at the center of Walmart’s data, AI and automation drive. Walmart uses first-party shopper data and AI tools to target and measure campaigns across its apps, websites, in-store screens and now connected TVs via Vizio, powering its rapidly expanding retail media platform,” he told CNBC in an email. Walmart’s McMillon highlighted Sparky, the company’s AI shopping assistant, as another change the retailer has made to provide a more tech-enabled front-end user experience. The revamped platform is more personalized, understands shopping context and could be “more like TikTok” if users are browsing for fun, he said. Top stock picks for 2026 Looking ahead to 2026, Walmart is one of Tengler’s top six stock picks for the new year, and it’s a position he’d like to own for the next three to five years. “If you think about old economy companies that have pivoted to all kinds of new technologies, Walmart is really the poster child. They’re embracing digitization, cloud computing, robotics, AI, not only in e-commerce but also in their advertising business,” the asset manager said. As of Monday’s close, Walmart stock had risen 26% since the beginning of the year, compared with 16% for the S&P 500 over the same period. Eric Clark, portfolio manager at Accuvest Global Advisors, said one reason Walmart has already been so successful in e-commerce is that it’s following established strategies set by Amazon, particularly in improving its sales-to-employee ratio, a measure of productivity. “Walmart is basically taking a lot of what Amazon has been doing,” he told CNBC. “The advantage they have over Amazon is that they serve a more economically distressed segment than Amazon.” Walmart’s “everyday low prices” strategy has traditionally targeted lower-income customers, making it a defensive strategy and a boon during tough times when demand for bargains increases. But in recent years, the company has successfully expanded its customer base to higher-income consumers, making it more competitive with Amazon. Walmart+ membership services include free delivery on online orders and other benefits. Investors said this is one of the factors driving this change, helping the company build an ecosystem across its products and partnerships with other companies. Tengler said that while Amazon is the undisputed leader in e-commerce, smaller retailers (such as Target) that haven’t made such large investments in e-commerce and logistics automation are at risk of losing market share to Walmart. Simpson said he believes Walmart is taking some business from Amazon because of its ability to do same-day delivery at scale. Higher Valuations Walmart’s move to Nasdaq also serves another important purpose. That could help justify a higher valuation, in line with valuations for retail-technology hybrid companies, Simpson said. “If there’s an argument against the Wal-Mart bull case at this point, it’s that you can point to it and say it has a high multiple,” Simpson said in an interview. “But I think their move there[to technology]is intentional and justifies the higher multiple because they want to separate from a boring, traditional, boring retailer into a more progressive, AI-driven e-commerce company.”
