For new and old investors, taking full advantage of the stock market and investing with confidence are common goals. Zacks Premium provides lots of different ways to do both.
The popular research service can help you become a smarter, more self-assured investor, giving you access to daily updates of the Zacks Rank and Zacks Industry Rank, the Zacks #1 Rank List, Equity Research reports, and Premium stock screens.
It also includes access to the Zacks Style Scores.
What are the Zacks Style Scores? The Zacks Style Scores is a unique set of guidelines that rates stocks based on three popular investing types, and were developed as complementary indicators for the Zacks Rank. This combination helps investors choose securities with the highest chances of beating the market over the next 30 days.
Each stock is given an alphabetic rating of A, B, C, D or F based on their value, growth, and momentum qualities. With this system, an A is better than a B, a B is better than a C, and so on, meaning the better the score, the better chance the stock will outperform.
The Style Scores are broken down into four categories:
Value ScoreFinding good stocks at good prices, and discovering which companies are trading under their true value, are what value investors like to focus on. So, the Value Style Score takes into account ratios like P/E, PEG, Price/Sales, Price/Cash Flow, and a host of other multiples to highlight the most attractive and discounted stocks.
Growth ScoreGrowth investors are more concerned with a stock's future prospects, and the overall financial health and strength of a company. Thus, the Growth Style Score analyzes characteristics like projected and historic earnings, sales, and cash flow to find stocks that will see sustainable growth over time.
Momentum ScoreMomentum investors, who live by the saying "the trend is your friend," are most interested in taking advantage of upward or downward trends in a stock's price or earnings outlook. Utilizing one-week price change and the monthly percentage change in earnings estimates, among other factors, the Momentum Style Score can help determine favorable times to buy high-momentum stocks.
VGM ScoreWhat if you like to use all three types of investing? The VGM Score is a combination of all Style Scores, making it one of the most comprehensive indicators to use with the Zacks Rank. It rates each stock on their combined weighted styles, which helps narrow down the companies with the most attractive value, best growth forecast, and most promising momentum.
How Style Scores Work with the Zacks Rank The Zacks Rank is a proprietary stock-rating model that harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions, or changes to a company's earnings expectations, to help investors build a successful portfolio.
It's highly successful, with #1 (Strong Buy) stocks producing an unmatched +24% average annual return since 1988. That's more than double the S&P 500. But because of the large number of stocks we rate, there are over 200 companies with a Strong Buy rank, plus another 600 with a #2 (Buy) rank, on any given day.
But it can feel overwhelming to pick the right stocks for you and your investing goals with over 800 top-rated stocks to choose from.
That's where the Style Scores come in.
To maximize your returns, you want to buy stocks with the highest probability of success. This means picking stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 or #2 that also have Style Scores of A or B. If you find yourself looking at stocks with a #3 (Hold) rank, make sure they have Scores of A or B as well to ensure as much upside potential as possible.
The direction of a stock's earnings estimate revisions should always be a key factor when choosing which stocks to buy, since the Scores were created to work together with the Zacks Rank.
A stock with a #4 (Sell) or #5 (Strong Sell) rating, for instance, even one with Scores of A and B, will still have a declining earnings forecast, and a greater chance its share price will fall too.
Thus, the more stocks you own with a #1 or #2 Rank and Scores of A or B, the better.
Stock to Watch: MasterCard (MA - Free Report) Founded in 1966 and headquartered in Purchase, NY, Mastercard Inc. is a leading global payment solutions company that provides an array of services in support of credit, debit, mobile, web-based and contactless payments, and other related electronic payment programs to financial institutions and other entities.
MA is a #3 (Hold) on the Zacks Rank, with a VGM Score of B.
Additionally, the company could be a top pick for growth investors. MA has a Growth Style Score of B, forecasting year-over-year earnings growth of 15.2% for the current fiscal year.
12 analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days for fiscal 2026. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.09 to $19.60 per share. MA boasts an average earnings surprise of +5.5%.
With a solid Zacks Rank and top-tier Growth and VGM Style Scores, MA should be on investors' short list.
Valor’s terminal ecosystem is fully certified with Visa Platform Connect
JERICHO, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Valor PayTech today announced expanded payment acceptance capabilities, through Visa Platform Connect (VPC).
"Expanding our capabilities through Visa Platform Connect reflects our continued focus on delivering flexible payment technology solutions for our partners and merchants.” Daniel O’Connell
Share Visa Platform Connect is a solution of Visa, a world leader of digital payments, designed to help payment providers, fintechs, ISVs, processors, and merchant organizations access Visa’s global payment infrastructure through a streamlined integration model to help them innovate, grow, and deliver market-leading payments solutions.
Valor’s terminal ecosystem is fully certified with Visa Platform Connect, enabling partners and merchants to access payment capabilities supported by Visa’s global network infrastructure across in-store, mobile, and unattended commerce environments.
“Expanding our capabilities through Visa Platform Connect reflects our continued focus on delivering flexible payment technology solutions for our partners and merchants,” said Daniel O’Connell, COO of Valor PayTech. “We’re pleased to work with Visa to help simplify access to modern payment infrastructure, security capabilities, and digital payment technologies.”
Through Visa Platform Connect, Valor PayTech supports payment technologies designed to help simplify connectivity, reduce integration complexity, and support deployment of new payment capabilities.
Capabilities supported through Visa Platform Connect include digital wallet enablement, tokenization, real-time payment processing, and enhanced security frameworks.
For more information about Valor PayTech, visit valorpaytech.com.
About Valor PayTech
Valor PayTech provides next-generation payment technology for ISOs, ISVs, and merchants. The company offers a full suite of payment solutions, including smart terminals and secure transaction processing, built to support the evolving needs of commerce.
Visa (V - Free Report) is one of the stocks most watched by Zacks.com visitors lately. So, it might be a good idea to review some of the factors that might affect the near-term performance of the stock.
Over the past month, shares of this global payments processor have returned -1.3%, compared to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.2% change. During this period, the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry, which Visa falls in, has lost 1.8%. The key question now is: What could be the stock's future direction?
While media releases or rumors about a substantial change in a company's business prospects usually make its stock 'trending' and lead to an immediate price change, there are always some fundamental facts that eventually dominate the buy-and-hold decision-making.
Earnings Estimate RevisionsRather than focusing on anything else, we at Zacks prioritize evaluating the change in a company's earnings projection. This is because we believe the fair value for its stock is determined by the present value of its future stream of earnings.
Our analysis is essentially based on how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to take the latest business trends into account. When earnings estimates for a company go up, the fair value for its stock goes up as well. And when a stock's fair value is higher than its current market price, investors tend to buy the stock, resulting in its price moving upward. Because of this, empirical studies indicate a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and short-term stock price movements.
Visa is expected to post earnings of $3.21 per share for the current quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +7.7%. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged.
For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $13.09 points to a change of +14.1% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has changed +0.1%.
For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $14.81 indicates a change of +13.1% from what Visa is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed +0.1%.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool -- the Zacks Rank -- is a more conclusive indicator of a stock's near-term price performance, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for Visa.
The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:
12 Month EPS
Projected Revenue GrowthWhile earnings growth is arguably the most superior indicator of a company's financial health, nothing happens as such if a business isn't able to grow its revenues. After all, it's nearly impossible for a company to increase its earnings for an extended period without increasing its revenues. So, it's important to know a company's potential revenue growth.
For Visa, the consensus sales estimate for the current quarter of $11.35 billion indicates a year-over-year change of +11.6%. For the current and next fiscal years, $45.35 billion and $50.04 billion estimates indicate +13.4% and +10.3% changes, respectively.
Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryVisa reported revenues of $11.23 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +17.1%. EPS of $3.31 for the same period compares with $2.76 a year ago.
Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $10.69 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +5.03%. The EPS surprise was +7.12%.
The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters. The company topped consensus revenue estimates each time over this period.
ValuationWithout considering a stock's valuation, no investment decision can be efficient. In predicting a stock's future price performance, it's crucial to determine whether its current price correctly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects.
Comparing the current value of a company's valuation multiples, such as its price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), to its own historical values helps ascertain whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, whereas comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of how reasonable its stock price is.
The Zacks Value Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which pays close attention to both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics to grade stocks from A to F (an A is better than a B; a B is better than a C; and so on), is pretty helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.
Visa is graded D on this front, indicating that it is trading at a premium to its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.
ConclusionThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about Visa. However, its Zacks Rank #2 does suggest that it may outperform the broader market in the near term.
Key Takeaways Visa certified Valor PayTech's terminal ecosystem with Visa Platform Connect for streamlined access.VPC enables digital wallets, tokenization, real-time payments and advanced security features.Visa processed about 135.5 billion transactions in the first-half fiscal 2026, up 9% year over year. Visa Inc. (V - Free Report) continues to strengthen the reach of its payment infrastructure through a new collaboration with Valor PayTech, whose terminal ecosystem is now fully certified with Visa Platform Connect (“VPC”). The certification enables merchants, fintechs, payment providers and software vendors using Valor PayTech’s technology to access V’s global payment network through a streamlined integration framework. The move expands the availability of Visa-powered payment capabilities across in-store, mobile and unattended commerce environments.
The partnership highlights Visa’s broader strategy of embedding its payment capabilities deeper into the commerce ecosystem. The company is increasingly positioning its network as a platform that powers a wide range of payment experiences. By enabling technology providers like Valor PayTech to integrate through a streamlined framework, V can extend its footprint across more merchant touchpoints while reducing implementation complexity for partners.
Through VPC, Valor PayTech can offer capabilities such as digital wallet acceptance, tokenization, real-time payment processing and advanced security features. These tools are becoming increasingly important as businesses seek to modernize payment experiences and meet consumer demand for faster, more seamless transactions. The simplified connectivity model may also help partners bring new services to market more efficiently.
Expanding the number of technology providers connected to Visa’s infrastructure can strengthen the company’s ecosystem and create additional opportunities for transaction growth. As digital payments continue to gain momentum worldwide, partnerships like this could help V further deepen its competitive advantage and extend the reach of its global network. In the first half of fiscal 2026, it processed around 135.5 billion transactions, up 9% year over year.
How Are Competitors Faring?Some of V’s competitors in the payments space include Mastercard Incorporated (MA - Free Report) and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL - Free Report) .
Mastercard is pursuing a platform-centric strategy through open banking, account-to-account payments and embedded finance. MA continues to expand partnerships with fintechs and merchants while leveraging its multi-rail network to support real-time payments, digital wallets and cross-border money movement.
PayPal is strengthening its position through branded checkout, Venmo, open commerce solutions and stablecoin initiatives. PYPL is focused on improving merchant acceptance, streamlining digital transactions and expanding value-added services that help businesses manage payments, customer engagement and commerce operations.
Visa’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesOver the past year, shares of Visa have declined 13.7% compared with the industry’s 27.1% fall.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, V trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22.39, above the industry average of 15.83. V carries a Value Score of C.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Visa’s fiscal 2026 earnings implies a 14.1% jump from the year-ago period.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Visa stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
SummaryCompaniesJudge calls revised settlement fair, reasonable and adequateSettlement cuts swipe fees for five years, ends 'Honor All Cards' ruleOpponents said cost of accepting popular rewards cards still too highNEW YORK, June 10 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge granted preliminary approval to Visa's (V.N), opens new tab and Mastercard's (MA.N), opens new tab revised $38 billion settlement with merchants who accused the card networks of charging too much to process payments on their credit cards.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, New York, said the settlement covering more than 12 million merchants was "fair, reasonable, and adequate," and that he was likely to eventually grant final approval.
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Cogan ruled on Tuesday, nearly two years after a different judge rejected a proposed $30 billion settlement as too small. Some groups including the National Retail Federation, the world's largest retail trade group, also opposed the new settlement and plan further challenges.
The settlement announced in November was intended to end litigation that began in 2005, when merchants accused Visa, Mastercard and banks of conspiring to violate U.S. antitrust laws, including through the collection of "swipe fees, opens new tab."
SWIPE FEES WOULD BE CUTAlso known as interchange fees, swipe fees totaled $118.8 billion, opens new tab for Visa and Mastercard in the United States in 2025, up from $111.2 billion in 2024 and $25.6 billion in 2009, the Merchants Payments Coalition said. The average fee was 2.36%.
Visa and Mastercard agreed to lower swipe fees by 0.1 percentage point for five years, while standard consumer rates would be lowered to no more than 1.25% for eight years.
Merchants could also choose whether to accept cards in distinct categories: commercial cards, premium consumer cards — including the popular rewards cards that dominate the card market — and standard consumer cards.
That provision would effectively end the longstanding "Honor All Cards" rule requiring merchants to accept all Visa and Mastercard cards or none. Merchants also got more options to impose surcharges on customers.
Visa shares rose 1.7% on Tuesday while Mastercard shares rose 2%.
MORE OBJECTIONS PREDICTEDIn separate statements, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Convenience Stores said the revised settlement failed to address a "broken" credit card market, and NACS General Counsel Doug Kantor predicted "many more objections" will be filed.
Objectors said merchants would still pay too much to accept rewards cards and be required to "honor all issuers" in a given network, meaning they could not accept one bank's cards and reject another's.
Cogan said many objections had merit, but the settlement didn't need to be perfect.
"The objectors identify several things that they want to do but can’t (e.g., rejecting cards at the issuer-level, surcharging at the issuer-level) and that they theoretically can do but won’t (e.g., rejecting premium cards)," he said. "But the question is not whether the amended settlement constitutes the best possible recovery, end stop – it’s whether the amended settlement constitutes the best possible recovery in light of what can be gained and lost through trial."
Other objectors included Walmart (WMT.O), opens new tab and the Merchants Payments Coalition. Neither immediately commented.
NOBEL ECONOMIST SAYS CONSUMERS COULD BENEFITThe card networks welcomed Cogan's decision.
Visa said the settlement gives merchants more flexibility in accepting payments, while Mastercard said the accord "balances the interests of all parties."
Supporters of the settlement included the Electronic Payments Coalition, whose members include the card networks and large issuers such as Bank of America (BAC.N), opens new tab, Capital One (COF.N), opens new tab, Chase (JPM.N), opens new tab and Citibank (C.N), opens new tab.
Two experts hired by the plaintiffs, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and University of Washington professor Keith Leffler, said the changes could save merchants $38 billion by 2031 and provide $224 billion of benefits overall, including to consumers.
The $30 billion settlement would have lowered swipe fees by 0.07 percentage point over five years and also allowed more surcharges.
In rejecting that accord in June 2024, U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie said fees would have still been above where they were absent any antitrust violations, and merchants would remain stuck with the "Honor All Cards" rule.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York. Editing by Aurora Ellis, Bill Berkrot and Mark Potter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Visa and Mastercard may be winding down a two-decade long court battle with merchants over the fees merchants pay to accept credit cards.
A judge granted preliminary approval Tuesday (June 9) to the companies’ $38 billion settlement with merchants that was announced in November, Reuters reported Tuesday.
The judge said the settlement was “fair, reasonable, and adequate” and that he was likely to approve it, according to the report.
The Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC), which advocates for credit unions, community banks and payment card networks, said in a Tuesday press release that the agreement between Visa, Mastercard and merchants guarantees lower processing rates and other concessions that amount to more than $200 billion over eight years.
“It is a guaranteed win for Main Street and provides meaningful solutions for businesses and consumers,” EPC Executive Chairman Richard Hunt said in the release. “Unfortunately, corporate mega-stores, their lobbyists and their lawyers want to block this agreement to push untested, unworkable mandates that only further pad their profits.”
When the settlement was announced in November, PYMNTS reported that the agreement aimed to end a 20-year legal battle between Visa and Mastercard on one side and merchants on the other over interchange fees.
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The case began in 2005 when businesses accused Visa, Mastercard and larger banks of colluding to violate U.S. monopoly laws through the card companies’ collection of interchange fees, which are also known as “swipe fees,” to process transactions.
The settlement would see Visa and Mastercard reduce interchange fees by 0.1 percentage points for five years, permit merchants to choose whether they want to accept U.S. cards in certain categories, cap standard consumer rates at 1.25% and give merchants more freedom to impose surcharges on credit card users.
Not all merchants were pleased with the settlement when it was announced. The Merchants Payments Coalition said in November that the fee reduction was “miniscule” and that Visa and Mastercard would be free to raise fees without restrictions after the temporary cuts expire.
It was reported in December that the National Association of Convenience Stores and the National Retail Federation filed complaints opposing the settlement.
An earlier settlement offer was rejected in 2024, leading Visa and Mastercard to propose the newer one.
Key Takeaways Visa partnered with OpenWay to help Asia Pacific institutions roll out payment products faster.OpenWay's Way4 platform enables quicker integration of selected Visa payment capabilities.Way4 supports cards, wallets and real-time payments, with more Visa solutions planned. Visa Inc. (V - Free Report) is expanding its role in the digital payments ecosystem through a new collaboration with OpenWay. The partnership is designed to help banks, processors and fintechs across the Asia Pacific introduce new payment offerings more efficiently by leveraging OpenWay’s Way4 platform. As financial institutions face increasing pressure to modernize customer experiences, the collaboration aims to reduce implementation complexity and speed up the rollout of innovative payment products.
The initiative allows selected Visa payment capabilities to be integrated more quickly into OpenWay’s Way4 platform through earlier alignment on product requirements and implementation frameworks. By streamlining deployment processes, the collaboration can help financial institutions shorten development cycles and bring new services to market faster.
Way4 serves as a unified platform supporting card issuance, digital wallets, merchant acquiring, real-time payments and other financial services. Its ability to operate across on-premise, cloud, SaaS and hybrid environments provides institutions with deployment flexibility while maintaining operational reliability. The platform’s broad functionality makes it a useful foundation for banks seeking to expand digital payment capabilities and adapt to evolving customer expectations.
For V, the collaboration strengthens its strategy of embedding its payment technologies deeper into the financial services ecosystem. The framework already supports initiatives such as Visa Flexible Credential and Visa Fleet 2.0, with additional Visa solutions expected to be added over time. While the announcement may not immediately impact financial results, it reinforces Visa’s long-term efforts to drive payment innovation and expand the reach of its network across global markets.
How Are Competitors Faring?Some of V’s competitors in the payments space include Mastercard Incorporated (MA - Free Report) and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL - Free Report) .
Mastercard continues to expand its payment infrastructure through partnerships that connect banks, fintechs and merchants to its network. MA is investing heavily in open banking, real-time payments and cross-border capabilities, helping financial institutions launch digital payment solutions faster and reach customers more efficiently.
PayPal remains focused on broadening its payment ecosystem through wallet innovations, merchant services and seamless checkout solutions. PYPL is integrating new technologies and partnerships to support faster digital transactions, improve customer engagement and help businesses adapt to evolving payment preferences globally.
Visa’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesOver the past year, shares of Visa have declined 12.3% compared with the industry’s 27.9% fall.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, V trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22.76, above the industry average of 15.65. V carries a Value Score of D.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Visa’s fiscal 2026 earnings implies a 14.1% jump from the year-ago period.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Visa stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
New collaboration brings Visa’s global payment network to one of the largest AI platforms and aims to support seamless, secure transactions and broader AI-powered use cases across commerce environments supported by agents
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Visa (NYSE: V) today announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, enabling seamless and trusted payments across OpenAI. The companies made the announcement at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence.
The collaboration is part of the broader Visa Intelligent Commerce initiative, which is focused on extending secure payment capabilities into new digital environments. Together, Visa and OpenAI will also explore a range of enterprise applications, including developer-focused experiences powered by Codex, as well as more automated and conversational workflows, as AI continues to evolve as an important interface for digital interactions.
As part of the partnership, Visa’s payment capabilities will be integrated into OpenAI experiences, giving developers and merchants a streamlined way to accept Visa payments initiated by agents. Alongside OpenAI, Visa will deliver the underlying network, tokenization and risk capabilities that support trusted and secure transactions.
Transactions will operate within clearly defined user permissions, policies and controls, such as spending limits, merchant categories or required approvals. Transactions will use tokenized Visa credentials and real-time authorization and fraud monitoring, helping enable new AI-enabled payment experiences to maintain strong security and consumer protection.
“AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile technology ever did,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa. “As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI.”
“Commerce is going to happen in many more places and in many more ways than it does today, and agents will play an increasingly important role in helping people complete tasks that involve money—from purchases and payments to more complex transactions,” said Marco Mahrus, Head of Partnerships, Commerce at OpenAI. “By integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're building the infrastructure for secure, transparent, and user-controlled agentic transactions, helping people do more with AI agents while maintaining confidence that payments are being handled safely and securely.”
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
New Agent Scoring, Agentic Registry and Large Transaction Model capabilities, stablecoin settlement and token enhancements support the next gen of digital commerce
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At Visa Payments Forum 2026, Visa (NYSE: V) today announced new AI, stablecoin and token capabilities designed to help clients unlock the next generation of commerce. These innovations reflect a simple objective: ensuring trust, security and control evolve alongside increasingly fast, automated and intelligent commerce experiences.
In a keynote presentation, Jack Forestell, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Visa, outlined how two foundational shifts—artificial intelligence and stablecoins—are transforming both the front end and back end of money movement, and how Visa is enabling clients to participate.
“AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end,” said Forestell. “Visa’s role is to enable it to work securely, reliably and at global scale, for every participant in the ecosystem.”
Powering the Front End of Commerce—and How It Gets Built—with AI
Visa detailed how AI is reshaping how transactions are initiated, authorized and trusted—while also accelerating how new commerce experiences are designed, developed and delivered, particularly as AI agents increasingly act on behalf of consumers and businesses.
Visa Intelligent Commerce, the company’s platform for agentic commerce, provides the trust, controls and connectivity needed for AI agents to securely discover, initiate and complete transactions.
To support this shift, Visa is working across the ecosystem—partnering with leading AI platforms, enabling new merchant capabilities and building infrastructure to ensure agent-initiated transactions are transparent and trusted, including:
Agent Score: Created with New Generation, it allows merchants to evaluate their websites for agentic commerce readiness—specifically, whether AI agents can navigate, understand and complete tasks on a merchant’s website. Agentic Directory: Merchants need to know which agents can be trusted to transact on their sites, and agents need confidence that they are interacting with legitimate merchants. The directory includes agents and merchants that Visa has verified as legitimate participants in agentic commerce. OpenAI Partnership: a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, enabling seamless and trusted payments across OpenAI. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence. Large Transaction Model: An AI model trained on billions of transactions to improve fraud detection while increasing authorization performance and reducing false declines—a trade-off the industry has struggled with for years. Visa also demonstrated early development concepts from its Crypto Labs and developer teams. This included a Command Line Interface proof of concept that lets AI agents pay for digital services directly in the terminal using Visa’s tokenized credentials.
“We believe a growing share of creation and transactions will be led by developers using AI tools,” said Forestell. “We are working with the industry to make cards the best way to pay in the Command Line.”
Enhancing Tokens for AI-Driven Commerce
Visa announced significant enhancements to its tokens, focused on bringing more data, context and assurance into the credentials used in digital commerce.
Today, tokens already carry a highly secure data set purpose-built for digital payments. As commerce extends to new channels and agents, Visa is enriching the data to provide more details on the transaction type, where the token is being used and who is making the payment.
A second key advancement is a token assurance signal. Token use is evaluated throughout its lifecycle—based on provisioning and behavioral history—to generate a signal of trust behind each transaction.
These enhancements provide issuers with stronger signals for authorization decisions, helping reduce false declines for merchants while minimizing friction for consumers.
Designed for AI-driven commerce, these developments embed identity, permissions and behavioral signals more deeply into credentials—allowing trust to travel with the transaction across devices, channels and use cases, including those initiated autonomously by AI agents.
Modernizing the Back End of Money Movement with Stablecoins
Visa also shared progress in modernizing settlement and value transfer through stablecoins and blockchain-based infrastructure.
Tokenized Deposits: Visa announced it will build the technology layer that can allow banks to turn traditional deposits into programmable, always-on digital money. This gives banks a way to match the speed and flexibility of stablecoins while keeping funds on balance sheet. Stablecoin Settlement: Visa is expanding stablecoin settlement pilots across multiple regions, blockchains and currencies. Building on its first stablecoin settlement pilots in early 2025, Visa has moved billions of dollars in stablecoins across VisaNet, with an annualized run rate of approximately $7 billion as of March 2026. With issuing banks already settling seven days a week onchain with Visa, Visa is also working to extend seven-day settlement to include acquirers, increasing flexibility and frequency across the entire ecosystem. Stablecoin-Linked Cards: Visa continues to expand stablecoin-linked card programs, enabling consumers and businesses to spend stablecoin balances anywhere Visa is accepted. With more than 160 programs live or in development globally, adoption is expected to accelerate. Helping Clients Modernize Without Disruption
Across these innovations, Visa emphasized a consistent theme from clients: modernization is essential, but full system replacement is not practical. Visa is addressing this with modular, cloud-native capabilities that integrate with existing infrastructure and enable banks, fintechs, acquirers and merchants to modernize at their own pace.
For issuers, the Pismo core banking platform enables flexible, real-time banking and processing capabilities with a phased path away from traditional systems. For acquirers and merchants, Unified Checkout provides a consistent way to accept both card and non-card payments through a single orchestration layer—supporting evolving commerce models, including AI-driven transactions. Visa Intelligent Authorization uses real-time network signals and advanced models to help acquirers and their merchants optimize authorization approvals and capture incremental spend that might otherwise be declined. Leading the Evolution of Commerce
Taken together, the announcements at Visa Payments Forum reflect a clear vision: Visa is becoming the platform that connects AI, programmable money, modern infrastructure and global trust so clients can win now and be ready for what’s next.
“History is filled with innovations that never reached scale,” said Forestell. “What determines success is trust, security and global reach. That’s what Visa brings to every new era of commerce – and what we’re building for the future.”
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
Shoppers who use AI bots powered by OpenAI to buy products will have their purchases secured by Visa's network, security infrastructure and credentialing capabilities, the payments company said.
Visa (NYSE: V) today announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, enabling seamless and trusted payments across OpenAI. The companies made the announcement at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260610422687/en/
The collaboration is part of the broader Visa Intelligent Commerce initiative, which is focused on extending secure payment capabilities into new digital environments. Together, Visa and OpenAI will also explore a range of enterprise applications, including developer-focused experiences powered by Codex, as well as more automated and conversational workflows, as AI continues to evolve as an important interface for digital interactions.
As part of the partnership, Visa’s payment capabilities will be integrated into OpenAI experiences, giving developers and merchants a streamlined way to accept Visa payments initiated by agents. Alongside OpenAI, Visa will deliver the underlying network, tokenization and risk capabilities that support trusted and secure transactions.
Transactions will operate within clearly defined user permissions, policies and controls, such as spending limits, merchant categories or required approvals. Transactions will use tokenized Visa credentials and real-time authorization and fraud monitoring, helping enable new AI-enabled payment experiences to maintain strong security and consumer protection.
“AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile technology ever did,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa. “As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa’s focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless. That’s the infrastructure we’re building with partners like OpenAI.”
“Commerce is going to happen in many more places and in many more ways than it does today, and agents will play an increasingly important role in helping people complete tasks that involve money—from purchases and payments to more complex transactions,” said Marco Mahrus, Head of Partnerships, Commerce at OpenAI. “By integrating with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're building the infrastructure for secure, transparent, and user-controlled agentic transactions, helping people do more with AI agents while maintaining confidence that payments are being handled safely and securely.”
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260610422687/en/
At Visa Payments Forum 2026, Visa (NYSE: V) today announced new AI, stablecoin and token capabilities designed to help clients unlock the next generation of commerce. These innovations reflect a simple objective: ensuring trust, security and control evolve alongside increasingly fast, automated and intelligent commerce experiences.
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In a keynote presentation, Jack Forestell, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Visa, outlined how two foundational shifts—artificial intelligence and stablecoins—are transforming both the front end and back end of money movement, and how Visa is enabling clients to participate.
“AI is transforming the front end of commerce. Stablecoins are reshaping the back end,” said Forestell. “Visa’s role is to enable it to work securely, reliably and at global scale, for every participant in the ecosystem.”
Powering the Front End of Commerce—and How It Gets Built—with AI
Visa detailed how AI is reshaping how transactions are initiated, authorized and trusted—while also accelerating how new commerce experiences are designed, developed and delivered, particularly as AI agents increasingly act on behalf of consumers and businesses.
Visa Intelligent Commerce, the company’s platform for agentic commerce, provides the trust, controls and connectivity needed for AI agents to securely discover, initiate and complete transactions.
To support this shift, Visa is working across the ecosystem—partnering with leading AI platforms, enabling new merchant capabilities and building infrastructure to ensure agent-initiated transactions are transparent and trusted, including:
Agent Score: Created with New Generation, it allows merchants to evaluate their websites for agentic commerce readiness—specifically, whether AI agents can navigate, understand and complete tasks on a merchant’s website. Agentic Directory: Merchants need to know which agents can be trusted to transact on their sites, and agents need confidence that they are interacting with legitimate merchants. The directory includes agents and merchants that Visa has verified as legitimate participants in agentic commerce. OpenAI Partnership: a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within agentic commerce, enabling seamless and trusted payments across OpenAI. Through the partnership, Visa will provide its global network, credentialing capabilities and security infrastructure to support agentic commerce experiences, helping consumers and businesses interact and transact with confidence. Large Transaction Model: An AI model trained on billions of transactions to improve fraud detection while increasing authorization performance and reducing false declines—a trade-off the industry has struggled with for years. Visa also demonstrated early development concepts from its Crypto Labs and developer teams. This included a Command Line Interface proof of concept that lets AI agents pay for digital services directly in the terminal using Visa’s tokenized credentials.
“We believe a growing share of creation and transactions will be led by developers using AI tools,” said Forestell. “We are working with the industry to make cards the best way to pay in the Command Line.”
Enhancing Tokens for AI-Driven Commerce
Visa announced significant enhancements to its tokens, focused on bringing more data, context and assurance into the credentials used in digital commerce.
Today, tokens already carry a highly secure data set purpose-built for digital payments. As commerce extends to new channels and agents, Visa is enriching the data to provide more details on the transaction type, where the token is being used and who is making the payment.
A second key advancement is a token assurance signal. Token use is evaluated throughout its lifecycle—based on provisioning and behavioral history—to generate a signal of trust behind each transaction.
These enhancements provide issuers with stronger signals for authorization decisions, helping reduce false declines for merchants while minimizing friction for consumers.
Designed for AI-driven commerce, these developments embed identity, permissions and behavioral signals more deeply into credentials—allowing trust to travel with the transaction across devices, channels and use cases, including those initiated autonomously by AI agents.
Modernizing the Back End of Money Movement with Stablecoins
Visa also shared progress in modernizing settlement and value transfer through stablecoins and blockchain-based infrastructure.
Tokenized Deposits: Visa announced it will build the technology layer that can allow banks to turn traditional deposits into programmable, always-on digital money. This gives banks a way to match the speed and flexibility of stablecoins while keeping funds on balance sheet. Stablecoin Settlement: Visa is expanding stablecoin settlement pilots across multiple regions, blockchains and currencies. Building on its first stablecoin settlement pilots in early 2025, Visa has moved billions of dollars in stablecoins across VisaNet, with an annualized run rate of approximately $7 billion as of March 2026. With issuing banks already settling seven days a week onchain with Visa, Visa is also working to extend seven-day settlement to include acquirers, increasing flexibility and frequency across the entire ecosystem. Stablecoin-Linked Cards: Visa continues to expand stablecoin-linked card programs, enabling consumers and businesses to spend stablecoin balances anywhere Visa is accepted. With more than 160 programs live or in development globally, adoption is expected to accelerate. Helping Clients Modernize Without Disruption
Across these innovations, Visa emphasized a consistent theme from clients: modernization is essential, but full system replacement is not practical. Visa is addressing this with modular, cloud-native capabilities that integrate with existing infrastructure and enable banks, fintechs, acquirers and merchants to modernize at their own pace.
For issuers, the Pismo core banking platform enables flexible, real-time banking and processing capabilities with a phased path away from traditional systems. For acquirers and merchants, Unified Checkout provides a consistent way to accept both card and non-card payments through a single orchestration layer—supporting evolving commerce models, including AI-driven transactions. Visa Intelligent Authorization uses real-time network signals and advanced models to help acquirers and their merchants optimize authorization approvals and capture incremental spend that might otherwise be declined. Leading the Evolution of Commerce
Taken together, the announcements at Visa Payments Forum reflect a clear vision: Visa is becoming the platform that connects AI, programmable money, modern infrastructure and global trust so clients can win now and be ready for what’s next.
“History is filled with innovations that never reached scale,” said Forestell. “What determines success is trust, security and global reach. That’s what Visa brings to every new era of commerce – and what we’re building for the future.”
About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260610464331/en/
Betting that people will soon grow more comfortable having artificial intelligence agents shop for groceries, plane tickets or diapers on their behalf, payments giant Visa said Wednesday that it has embedded its payment network inside of ChatGPT, empowering the chatbot to independently shop and complete transactions.
NYSE issues a pre-market daily advisory direct from the trading floor. NEW YORK, June 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) provides a daily pre-market update directly from the NYSE Trading Floor.
Here at Zacks, we offer our members many different opportunities to take full advantage of the stock market, as well as how to invest in ways that lead to long-term success.
One of our most popular services, Zacks Premium offers daily updates of the Zacks Rank and Zacks Industry Rank; full access to the Zacks #1 Rank List; Equity Research reports; and Premium stock screens like the Earnings ESP filter. All are useful tools to find what stocks to buy, what to sell, and what are today's hottest industries.
The service also includes the Focus List, which is a long-term portfolio of top stocks that boast a winning, market-beating combination of growth and momentum qualities.
Breaking Down the Zacks Focus ListIf you could get access to a curated list of stocks to kickstart your investment portfolio, wouldn't you jump at the chance to take a peek?
That's what the Zacks Focus List offers. It's a portfolio of 50 stocks that serve as a starting point for long-term investors to build their individual portfolios. The stocks included in the list are set to outperform the market over the next 12 months.
What makes the Focus List even more helpful is that each selection is accompanied by a full Zacks Analyst Report, which explains the reasoning behind every stock's selection and why we believe it's a good pick for the long-term.
The portfolio's past performance only solidifies why investors should consider it as a starting point. For 2020, the Focus List gained 13.85% on an annualized basis compared to the S&P 500's return of 9.38%. Cumulatively, the portfolio has returned 2,519.23% while the S&P returned 854.95%. Returns are for the period of February 1, 1996 to March 31, 2021.
Focus List MethodologyWhen stocks are picked for the Focus List, it reflects our enduring reliance on the power of earnings estimate revisions.
Earnings estimates are expectations of growth and profitability, and are determined by brokerage analysts. Together with company management, these analysts examine every aspect that may affect future earnings, like interest rates, the economy, and sector and industry optimism.
Earnings estimate revisions are very important, since investors also need to take into consideration what a company will earn in the future.
Stocks that receive upward earnings estimate revisions are more likely to receive even more upward changes in the future. For example, if an analyst raised their estimates last month, they're more likely to do it again this month, and other analysts are likely to do the same.
Utilizing the power of earnings estimate revisions is when the Zacks Rank joins the party. A unique, proprietary stock-rating model, the Zacks Rank uses changes to quarterly earnings expectations to help investors create a winning portfolio.
There are four main factors behind the Zacks Rank: Agreement, Magnitude, Upside, and Surprise. Each one of these features is then given a raw score that's recalculated every night and compiled into the Rank. Using this data, stocks are classified into five groups, ranging from "Strong Buy" to "Strong Sell."
The Focus List is comprised of stocks hand-picked from a long list of #1 (Strong Buy) or #2 (Buy) ranked companies, meaning that each new addition boasts a bullish earnings consensus among analysts.
Because stock prices react to revisions, buying stocks with rising earnings estimates can be very profitable. Focus List stocks offer investors a great opportunity to get into companies whose future earnings estimates will be raised, potentially leading to price momentum.
Focus List Spotlight: Visa (V - Free Report) Incorporated in 2007 as a Delaware corporation and headquartered in San Francisco, Visa Inc. operates as a leading global payments technology company. The firm went public in March 2008 through an IPO but traces its roots back to 1958. Over the past six decades, Visa has grown into one of the world’s most widely used payment networks.
Since being added to the Focus List on May 30, 2017 at $94.67 per share, shares of V have increased 241.14% to $322.96. The stock is currently a #2 (Buy) on the Zacks Rank.
For fiscal 2026, 14 analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.25 to $13.09. V boasts an average earnings surprise of 3.2%.
Additionally, V's earnings are expected to grow 14.1% for the current fiscal year.
Reveal Winning StocksUnlock all of our powerful research, tools and analysis, including the Zacks #1 Rank List, Equity Research Reports, Zacks Earnings ESP Filter, Premium Screener and more, as part of Zacks Premium. You'll quickly identify which stocks to buy, hold and sell, and target today's hottest industries, to help improve the performance of your portfolio. Gain full access now >>
University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, who runs the school’s IPO Initiative and is widely regarded as the dean of IPO research, told CNBC on June 11, 2026, that SpaceX’s pending offering will set a first-day underpricing record that dwarfs prior benchmarks held by Visa and Alibaba. “SpaceX is almost certainly going to blow them away,” Ritter said, referring to the pop between the IPO price and opening trade.
The Elon Musk-led rocket and satellite company is priced at a $1.75 trillion valuation, which works out to roughly 40 times estimated 2026 sales and 170 times EBITDA. The company expects to raise about $75 billion in fresh capital from the IPO. According to the SPCX ticker scheduled to begin trading on NASDAQ on June 12, 2026, the deal carries an unprecedented retail allocation that Ritter argues changes the math for individual investors.
The Records Ritter Says Will Fall Visa (NYSE:V | V Price Prediction) priced its March 2008 IPO at what was then the largest U.S. offering in history, raising roughly $17.9 billion. Since its debut, the payments network has returned 2,505.64% on a split-adjusted basis, with the stock at $318.78 as of June 10, 2026. SpaceX expects to raise about $75 billion from its upcoming IPO.
Visa’s most recent quarter showed why the post-IPO compounder narrative persists: Q1 FY2026 net revenue of $10.90 billion (up 14.6% year over year) and non-GAAP EPS of $3.17, with CEO Ryan McInerney highlighting “our Visa as a Service stack” positioning the company as a “payments hyperscaler.” The shares trade at a forward P/E of 21 with a price-to-sales ratio of 14.
Alibaba’s $25 Billion Bar Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) seized the global IPO record from Visa in September 2014 by raising roughly $25 billion. The retail tranche Ritter cites for SpaceX would match the entire size of Alibaba’s deal on its own.
Alibaba’s recent Q4 FY2026 revenue of $35.28 billion grew just 3% year over year, with adjusted EBITA falling 84% to $740 million as the company invested in AI. Cloud Intelligence Group external revenue accelerated to 40%, with CEO Eddie Wu telling investors that “AI-related products account for 30% of this revenue.” The stock trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 0.3.
Valuing SpaceX On Future Growth Ritter’s valuation lens aligns with how the market treats unprofitable AI leaders. “My main metric is price to sales. Given that this company, as well as the AI giants, currently aren’t profitable, they’re growing rapidly. But SpaceX is being valued not on the past, but what could be,” he said.
SpaceX’s S-1 backs the growth case. SpaceX reported 2025 consolidated revenue of $18,674 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $6,584 million, with Q1 2026 revenue of $4,694 million. The Connectivity segment (Starlink) generated Q1 2026 income from operations of $1,188 million, and Segment Adjusted EBITDA of $2,087 million, profitable enough to fund the loss-making Space and AI segments.
On unit economics, Ritter focused on the flywheel between cheaper launch and cheaper bandwidth: “They’ve already got an 80% market share with Starship. That’s likely to go to 100% due to the very low launch costs relative to the competition. But that’s not an enormous market. But the lower launch costs are going to allow Starlink satellites to be put up at lower cost, allowing Starlink internet access to be available at lower cost. They’re getting very good gross margins on that, and that could explode to be a much bigger business.”
That thesis is reinforced by the filing’s disclosure that 2025 Connectivity revenue grew $3,788 million, or 49.8%, with 99.9% growth in Starlink subscribers. The xAI segment acquired in February 2026 and orbital AI compute ambitions sit atop as speculative long-term optionality.
The Retail Warning The unprecedented allocation flips the usual IPO dynamic. “With the retail tranche, that’s going to be something like $25 billion of shares that retail investors are able to buy, which is bigger than the largest IPO in U.S. history by itself,” Ritter said. That access cuts both ways, given the multiples involved.
Even exceptional businesses can deliver disappointing returns if investors pay too much up front. Ritter’s reminder is worth keeping in mind as excitement builds: “A great company doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great stock.”
Key Takeaways Visa partnered with OpenAI to enable secure payments within AI-powered commerce experiences.Visa added Agent Score, Agentic Directory and fraud tools to support trusted AI transactions.Visa expanded stablecoin settlement, tokenized deposits and stablecoin-linked card initiatives. Visa Inc. (V - Free Report) is reinforcing its position at the center of the evolving payments landscape through a series of artificial intelligence, stablecoin and tokenization initiatives unveiled at its Payments Forum 2026. It announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI to enable secure Visa payments within AI-powered commerce experiences. As AI agents increasingly assist consumers with purchasing decisions and transaction execution, V is working to ensure its network remains embedded in the next generation of commerce flows.
The OpenAI partnership strengthens Visa’s Intelligent Commerce platform by combining the company’s payment network, tokenization technology and security capabilities with OpenAI. It is designed to allow AI agents to initiate transactions while operating within user-defined controls such as spending limits, merchant restrictions and approval requirements. If adoption accelerates, the collaboration could create new transaction opportunities for V while reinforcing trust and security in AI-driven commerce.
V is also expanding the infrastructure supporting this emerging ecosystem. New offerings such as Agent Score, Agentic Directory and the Large Transaction Model are designed to improve merchant readiness, establish trusted participants and enhance fraud detection. It is also enriching its token technology with additional identity and behavioral signals, enabling smarter authorization decisions while reducing friction and false declines. These capabilities further differentiate Visa’s network as commerce becomes increasingly digital and automated.
Beyond AI, V continues to advance its stablecoin strategy through expanded settlement programs, tokenized deposits and stablecoin-linked card initiatives. By investing simultaneously in AI-driven commerce and next-generation settlement infrastructure, Visa appears to be widening its competitive moat and creating additional avenues for long-term transaction and revenue growth.
How Are Competitors Faring?Some of V’s competitors in the fintech space include Mastercard Incorporated (MA - Free Report) and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL - Free Report) .
Mastercard recently expanded its Agent Pay strategy with the launch of Agent Pay for Machines, a platform designed for machine-to-machine and AI-agent payments. The solution enables autonomous agents to execute, authorize and settle transactions at machine speed, positioning Mastercard to support emerging AI-driven business models and automated commerce ecosystems.
PayPal is investing in agentic commerce through its Agentic Commerce Services, which includes Agent Ready and Store Sync. These capabilities allow AI-powered assistants to support product discovery and purchase decisions. The effort leverages PayPal's extensive merchant and wallet ecosystem, potentially creating new opportunities to drive payment volume and user engagement.
Visa’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesOver the past year, shares of Visa have declined 13% compared with the industry’s 26.7% fall.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, V trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22.60, above the industry average of 15.91. V carries a Value Score of D.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Visa’s fiscal 2026 earnings implies a 14.1% jump from the year-ago period.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Visa stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Visa (V - Free Report) closed at $318.97 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.24% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 1.75% gain on the day. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a rise of 1.86%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 2.54%.
Prior to today's trading, shares of the global payments processor had gained 0.83% outpaced the Business Services sector's loss of 1.26% and the S&P 500's loss of 1.63%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Visa in its upcoming release. The company is expected to report EPS of $3.21, up 7.72% from the prior-year quarter. Our most recent consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $11.35 billion, up 11.59% from the year-ago period.
V's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $13.09 per share and revenue of $45.35 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +14.12% and +13.37%, respectively.
Investors should also pay attention to any latest changes in analyst estimates for Visa. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. Therefore, positive revisions in estimates convey analysts' confidence in the business performance and profit potential.
Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. To capitalize on this, we've crafted the Zacks Rank, a unique model that incorporates these estimate changes and offers a practical rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, running from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), holds an admirable track record of superior performance, independently audited, with #1 stocks contributing an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.12% higher. Visa is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
From a valuation perspective, Visa is currently exchanging hands at a Forward P/E ratio of 24.66. This represents a premium compared to its industry average Forward P/E of 8.91.
It's also important to note that V currently trades at a PEG ratio of 1.73. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. As of the close of trade yesterday, the Financial Transaction Services industry held an average PEG ratio of 0.74.
The Financial Transaction Services industry is part of the Business Services sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 67, finds itself in the top 28% echelons of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank evaluates the power of our distinct industry groups by determining the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks forming the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.
Bank of America may exceed the initial forecast of 15% growth in revenue for its markets business in the second quarter, fueled by the equities business, Co-President Jim DeMare said on Tuesday.
Soccer Fans Can Build, Trade and Collect Custom BofA Fan Bands Featuring 140 Unique Beads Inspired by Iconic Host Cities and Teams
Key points
Bank of America, the Official Bank of FIFA World Cup 2026™, distributing more than 2 million BofA Fan Bands and 10 million beads The BofA Fan Bands Collection features 140 unique beads that can be collected and traded to create unique memories from the tournament , /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America, the Official Bank of FIFA World Cup 2026™, today announced the debut of 2 million custom, collectible BofA Fan Bands, starting June 11 across all 11 U.S. host cities.
Pre-made FIFA World Cup Trophy Fan Band "FIFA World Cup 2026 is the first World Cup on U.S. soil in decades, and we wanted to help create memories that will last even longer," said David Tyrie, President, Marketing, Digital and Specialized Consumer Client Solutions. "BofA Fan Bands are designed to capture the energy of FIFA World Cup 2026™, celebrating the iconic teams, passionate fans and the host cities at the heart of the tournament."
Where to get BofA Fan Bands
The exclusive BofA Fan Bands collection will debut across all 11 U.S. host cities beginning June 11. Featuring 140 custom-designed beads and more than 2 million free bracelets in red, blue and black, the collection draws inspiration from tournament moments, iconic host city landmarks and national team colors.
More than 10 million BofA Fan Band beads will be distributed nationwide, giving fans the chance to build, trade and collect personalized keepsakes throughout the tournament. The custom bead collection also pays tribute to the unique culture, energy and spirit of the American host cities welcoming FIFA World Cup 2026™.
The FIFA World Cup Trophy The Liberty Bell and a Philly cheesesteak Surfboards and palm trees in Los Angeles The Statue of Liberty and NYC taxi The Golden Gate Bridge and a San Francisco trolley car A 305 and Miami maracas Seattle's famous Mt. Ranier Kansas City's famous fountains and barbeque sauce A Dallas cowboy hat Atlanta's famous peach Rocket launch in Houston A Boston lobster and lucky clover Fans can build or pick up their curated BofA Fan Band, then step into a digital photo booth to capture the moment and have the photo sent directly to their phones. These experiences will be available at:
FIFA Fan Festivals™ and Fan Zones: Create personalized BofA Fan Bands at dedicated Bank of America experience stations across eight FIFA Fan Festivals and select Fan Zones nationwide. Stadium Fan Experiences and DC Fan Zone: Fans can select pre-made, matchup-themed BofA Fan Bands as part of the matchday experience. U.S. Soccer House: Build custom designs tailored for U.S. Soccer supporters at the Venice Beach-based location. BofA Fan Band Mobile Tours: Mobile tours will bring the BofA Fan Band experience directly to local community events in select host markets. Beyond BofA Fan Bands, Bank of America is supporting interactive spaces and exclusive fan engagements surrounding FIFA World Cup 2026™ in U.S. host cities throughout the summer:
Free Tickets for Veterans, Current Military and First Responders: Bank of America, Vet Tix and FIFA have partnered to provide $2.25 million in free FIFA World Cup 2026 tickets to military veterans, current military, first responders, and their families, who live in or near FIFA World Cup host cities.
FIFA Fan Festivals & Fan Zones: Bank of America will host dedicated experiences at eight FIFA Fan Festivals and select Fan Zones nationwide, including a marquee fan experience at the "Fan Village" in New York's Rockefeller Center from July 6 to July 19, and FIFA World Cup 2026™ Fan Zone on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Soccer House Presented by Bank of America: Located at 57 Windward Ave. in Venice Beach, Calif., this free fan destination will serve as the epicenter of the tournament on the West Coast.
To learn more about Bank of America's commitment to soccer and its broader sports partnerships, visit our Bank of America Sports webpage.
About Bank of America Sports Commitment
Beyond its growing soccer partnership portfolio, Bank of America partners with iconic brands in sports that share a vision for excellence and achievement. Through these partnerships, the bank works to deepen client relationships, inspire and showcase its teammates, create lasting economic impact in communities, and drive local and global growth through the unifying power of sport.
Frequently asked questions
Question: How is Bank of America involved with FIFA World Cup 2026™?
Answer: Bank of America is the Official Bank of FIFA World Cup 2026™, the most-watched sporting event in the world. As an official sponsor, the bank is activating across all 11 U.S. host cities with fan experiences and community initiatives designed to celebrate the tournament and build a lasting legacy for soccer in the United States.
Question: What are the BofA Fan Bands and what designs are available?
Answer: BofA Fan Bands are collectible bracelets available in red, blue and black featuring 140 custom-designed beads, inspired by the FIFA World Cup 2026™, host city landmarks and national team colors. Bank of America will be providing more than 10 million beads and more than 2 million bracelets.
Question: How can fans get a "BofA Fan Band" bracelet, and is there a cost?
Answer: Starting June 11, fans can pick up free, matchup-themed BofA Fan Bands at all 11 U.S. stadiums on matchdays or customize their own bracelets at Bank of America fan experiences across FIFA Fan Festivals, the U.S. Soccer House and local BofA Fan Band Mobile Tours.
Question: Will I be able to get a BofA Fan Band if I'm not attending a game or located in a host city?
Answer: BofA Fan Bands will be available at fan experiences where match tickets are not required, including FIFA Fan Festivals and select Fan Zones, the U.S. Soccer House and a BofA Fan Band Mobile Tour.
Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving nearly 70 million clients with approximately 3,500 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 59 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. As the #1 small business lender in the United States (FDIC), Bank of America offers industry leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom and register for news email alerts.
Reporters may contact
Andy Aldridge, Bank of America
Phone: 1.980.387.0514
[email protected]
250+ corporate and financial institution leaders convene in Singapore as APAC payments market reaches ~US$18 trillion1 Bank of America held its annual Treasury Leaders Summit (TLS) and Financial Institutions (FI) Forum events in Singapore to discuss the role of AI-led platforms for treasury, trade and payments Now in their 15th year, the events continue to convene clients and market participants to address key industry issues , /PRNewswire/ -- Increasingly complex operating environment for trade and capital flows, elevated FX volatility and evolving liquidity risks are accelerating demand for AI-driven treasury, trade and currency solutions among Asia Pacific companies as they look to enhance resilience and performance.
Leadership team of Bank of America at the Treasury Leaders Summit event in Singapore, May 20 This was a key takeaway from Bank of America's annual flagship client events held in Singapore – TLS (May 20) and FI Forum (May 21), which brought together more than 250 senior treasury and financial institution leaders from top global corporates, banks, asset managers and insurers.
Bank of America, the second largest bank in the world by market capitalization, has been hosting the TLS and FI Forum events for over 15 years, bringing together clients, market participants and policy makers to address the most pressing trends shaping payments, liquidity and transaction banking.
With more than US$13 billion in annual technology spend, Bank of America remains at the forefront of innovation, delivering world class solutions such as CashPro® and Intelligent Receivables®. These platforms help clients achieve real-time cash visibility, streamline payments and liquidity management, and enhance reconciliation capabilities at scale.
Hosted by Winnie Chen, Head of Global Payments Solutions (GPS), Asia Pacific at Bank of America, alongside senior global and regional leaders, the TLS and FI Forum underscored the US lender's role as a trusted strategic partner, convening clients to exchange insights, accelerate innovation and drive tangible outcomes.
"In an environment defined by persistent volatility and structural shifts, clients are seeking insights that go beyond theory," said Winnie Chen. "There is a clear pivot toward data and AI-driven capabilities that can help clients strengthen resilience, sharpen decision-making and deliver measurable results."
The events were held at a time when the Asia Pacific payments market has reached an estimated US$18 trillion in transaction value, highlighting a significant opportunity to optimize treasury, payments and risk management strategies in an increasingly complex environment.
"Bank of America's global platform, combined with our AI-enabled capabilities, positions us strongly to deliver seamless solutions that help clients navigate complexity and unlock growth," Chen added.
Frequently asked questions
Question: Who organizes the TLS and FI Forum events?
Answer: Bank of America's Global Payments Solutions (GPS) team organizes the Treasury Leadership Summit (TLS) and Financial Institutions (FI) Forum across Asia Pacific, with Singapore hosting its flagship editions. The bank has convened these events for over 15 years, reinforcing its long-standing commitment to client engagement and industry leadership.
Question: What is the objective of these events?
Answer: The forums are designed to bring together senior leaders from corporates and financial institutions to exchange perspectives on navigating market complexity. They provide a platform for peer-level dialogue focused on strengthening resilience, advancing innovation and delivering tangible outcomes amid evolving macroeconomic conditions, technological transformation and shifting client expectations.
Question: What differentiates Bank of America's Global Payments Solutions from its peers?
Answer: Bank of America's Global Payments Solutions business differentiates itself through the combination of its global network, deep industry expertise and sustained investment in technology innovation. With more than US$13 billion in annual technology spend, the bank delivers AI-enabled platforms such as CashPro® and Intelligent Receivables that provide clients with real-time insights, integrated liquidity management and scalable solutions. This positions Bank of America to help clients navigate complexity, enhance efficiency and drive growth across markets.
Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving nearly 70 million clients with approximately 3,500 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 59 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. As the #1 small business lender in the United States (FDIC), Bank of America offers industry leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom and register for news email alerts.
Reporters may contact
Kaustubh Kulkarni, Bank of America
Phone: +65 6678.1677
[email protected]
Refer-a-Friend, Custom Pay Plan and My Credit now available to BofA Clients
Key points
With Refer-a-Friend, eligible clients can earn referral bonuses by recommending credit cards to friends and family. Custom Pay Plan gives cardholders added flexibility to pay for purchases made using their credit card. My Credit helps Bank of America clients stay informed and engaged with their credit profile – all without impacting their score. BofA Rewards members have access to enhanced fraud and identity monitoring. , /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America today announced the rollout of three new tools designed to reward loyalty, provide greater flexibility for managing large purchases, and simplify access to credit monitoring: Refer-a-Friend, Custom Pay Plan and My Credit.
"With these tools, we're rewarding our clients in more ways, giving them greater visibility into their financial health and more control over how they manage their money," said Holly O'Neill, President, Consumer, Retail and Preferred at Bank of America. "Whether someone is just starting their financial journey with us or has been a client for years, we're committed to rewarding and empowering them each and every day."
Refer-a-Friend
Bank of America clients with a Customized Cash Rewards, Unlimited Cash Rewards or Travel Rewards credit card now have access to Refer-a-Friend, a new way to earn referral bonuses by sharing products they already trust. The program is easy to use:
Eligible clients can access a personalized referral link through the Bank of America mobile app or online banking and easily share it with friends and family members who might be interested in signing up for the card via text, email or social media. When a friend or family member applies and is approved, the referring client earns a reward while the friend receives the current new account offer. Referring cardholders can earn $100 in bonus cash rewards or 10,000 points per friend and family member account opened (up to $500 or 50,000 points per year). To reach even more clients, Bank of America will continue to expand the Refer-a-Friend program throughout 2026, with additional card products becoming eligible.
Custom Pay Plan
Bank of America's Custom Pay Plan is a new consumer credit card feature designed to help clients manage paying for their purchases with greater control and transparency.
After making a qualifying purchase with an eligible Bank of America credit card, clients can easily convert that purchase into a structured payment plan through the Bank of America mobile app or online banking. It is a simple and convenient way for clients to pay over time, helping them manage cash flow. Key features include:
Predictable costs: Replace traditional credit card interest with a fixed monthly fee disclosed upfront when the Plan is created. Flexible payment terms: Clients choose a repayment period that fits their budget, typically ranging from 3 to 18 months. Greater control and transparency: View total cost, monthly payments, and repayment schedule before creating a Plan. Rewards and benefits preserved: Continue to earn rewards at time of purchase and retain purchase protections associated with their credit card. My Credit
Bank of America's new My Credit tool is designed to help clients stay informed and engaged with their credit profile – without impacting their score. Available to eligible clients for free in the Bank of America mobile app or website, the feature allows clients to:
View their FICO® Score, access their credit report and see personalized insights. Receive alerts about changes to their FICO® Score and notifications of suspicious activity on their credit profile. Ask Erica®, Bank of America's AI-driven virtual financial assistant, to pull up their credit profile whenever they need it. "Your credit profile is one of the most important indicators of your financial health, and we want to make it as easy as possible for clients to understand and manage it," said Mary Hines Droesch, Head of Consumer & Small Business Products and Analytics at Bank of America. "Whether monitoring their FICO Score with My Credit or managing a large purchase with Custom Pay Plan, clients can be more informed and in control of their finances."
Enhanced Fraud and Identity Monitoring for BofA Rewards Members
Bank of America recently launched BofA Rewards, a no fee loyalty program designed to reward and recognize clients for their full relationship across their Bank of America banking and Merrill investing accounts. As of May 27, millions of clients can enroll in the new program to unlock benefits on eligible credit cards, cashback deals, banking services, curated experiences and more. BofA Rewards members, who are enrolled in My Credit, have access to enhanced fraud and identity monitoring. These My Credit features include dark web monitoring, Social Security Number monitoring, full-service identity restoration and more.
Beyond BofA Rewards, Bank of America helps protect clients through its enhanced Security Center – which lets clients manage online and mobile banking security options while bringing together security features, tools, and fraud and scam education in a centralized, client‑friendly experience – and using more than 50 AI-enabled fraud detection models to spot fraudulent activity more quickly and accurately.
Frequently asked questions
Question: Are these features available to all Bank of America clients, or only certain account holders?
Answer: Availability varies by feature. Refer-a-Friend is currently available to clients with a Customized Cash Rewards, Unlimited Cash Rewards or Travel Rewards credit card, but additional Bank of America card products will become eligible throughout 2026. My Credit is available to eligible Bank of America clients for free. Custom Pay Plan, is offered to clients with a consumer Bank of America credit card in good standing and who have made an eligible purchase.
Question: Can Refer-a-Friend rewards be earned in different currencies (cash, points, miles)?
Answer: Refer-a-Friend offers are paid in the card rewards currency of the existing cardholder. For example, an eligible cardholder of the Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards® credit card can refer their card to earn a $100 bonus cash reward per account opened.
Question: How can Bank of America clients access Custom Pay Plan?
Answer: Eligible clients in good standing that have a purchase of at least $100 made using their Bank of America credit card have the option to create a Custom Pay Plan directly through the Bank of America mobile app or online banking. Clients choose a repayment period that fits their budget, typically ranging from 3 to 18 months.
Question: How can Bank of America clients enroll in My Credit?
Answer: Bank of America clients will need to enroll in My Credit, given the existing FICO® Score program is being retired. To enroll, clients can log in to the mobile app or website, select "View your FICO Score" and follow the prompts.
Question: What additional benefits do BofA Rewards members receive, and when will those be available?
Answer: As of May 27, any Bank of America client with an active personal checking account is eligible to enroll in BofA Rewards to unlock benefits on eligible credit cards, cash back deals, banking services, curated experiences and more.
Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving nearly 70 million clients with approximately 3,500 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 59 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. As the #1 small business lender in the United States (FDIC), Bank of America offers industry leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, visit the Bank of America newsroom and register for news email alerts.
Reporters may contact
Don Vecchiarello, Bank of America
Phone: 1.980.387.4899
[email protected]
The Bank of America (NYSE:BAC | BAC Price Prediction) checklist of pre-peak warning signs is flashing at 70%, matching the rough average reading seen at the last seven major stock market tops over the past 35 years. That figure, attributed to Bank of America Global Research in a checklist recreated by SSR and circulated on X by @ThierryBorgeat, lands one week before Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh takes the helm of his first Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on June 16-17.
For market participants, the 70% figure from Bank of America is loaded and shouldn’t be misread. The post is explicit that the checklist tells you where you are in the cycle, not when a top hits, and the markets can sit near a peak for months and keep climbing.
Still, the data points deserve your attention. The S&P 500, tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), sits at a level the post pegs around 7,580, up from 6,144 when the same checklist last read 70% in February 2025.
The Scary-Sounding Number Let’s start with the headline figure: 70%. That’s the share of Bank of America’s pre-peak warning indicators currently firing, per the May reading from Bank of America Global Research.
For historical context, the same Bank of America checklist printed 88% in July 1990, 90% in March 2000, 80% in October 2007, 60% in September 2018, 50% in February 2020, and 50% in January 2022. The average across those prior peaks comes to 70%, which is the exact level today (or more precisely, in May of 2026).
What It Means The signals Bank of America has currently flagged span sentiment, valuation, credit, and macro factors. The list includes elevated consumer confidence and bullish expectations, stretched long-term growth expectations, record merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, and extreme valuations on a combined price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio-plus-inflation basis.
Three more are firing on the credit and breadth side, per Bank of America: low-P/E-ratio stocks badly lagging high-P/E stocks, credit stress collapsed to complacent lows, and tightening lending conditions from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS). The graphic also highlights the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence indicator, S&P 500 long-term growth expectations, and an inverted yield curve over the prior six months as items to watch.
The macro backdrop behind SPY’s run echoes the late-cycle framing. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index sank to 49.8 in April, well below the 60 recessionary threshold, while Core PCE rose to 129.63 in April, sitting at the 90.9 percentile of the past 12 months.
The Market Reaction The SPY ETF closed at $737.05 on June 9, down from $759.57 on June 2 over the one-week window. Year to date, SPY moved from $681.92 on December 31, 2025 to $737.05 on June 9.
Today, the S&P 500 and the SPY ETF are down slightly after annualized Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose to 4.2% in May, marking the CPI’s highest level since 2023. The S&P 500 was down by less than half a percent on Wednesday morning, so perhaps the market was ready for a not-so-ideal CPI print.
In any case, volatility around the SPY trade is rising into the meeting. The CBOE Volatility Index or VIX settled at 18.92 on June 8, still in the normal 15-20 range but at the 72nd percentile of the past 12 months.
The Bear Case The setup is what worries Bank of America. Headline CPI accelerated to 4% year over year in May and core CPI rose to 3%, even as consumer sentiment collapsed into recessionary territory.
The Fed has already executed three cuts to 4%, but per the source, futures markets have shifted toward pricing possible rate hikes later in 2026 rather than cuts. That’s the opposite of what investors holding SPY at record levels want to hear.
Polymarket assigns a 99% probability of no rate change at the June 16-17 meeting. The market’s attention sits on Warsh’s first press conference as Fed Chair, where any hawkish phrasing can hit SPY valuations directly.
The 10-year/2-year Treasury spread, a classic late-cycle tell, sits at 0.4% as of June 9, down from 0.74% in early February. The curve hasn’t inverted, yet the compression aligns with the cycle phase Bank of America’s 70% reading describes.
The Bottom Line The 70% checklist reading from Bank of America isn’t a sell signal, and the source itself rules out market timing. The same checklist read 70% in February 2025 when the S&P 500 was at 6,144, and SPY climbed substantially from there. “Late” can last a long time.
What changes the picture this month is Warsh. The Federal Reserve’s June 16-17 FOMC meeting marks his first as Fed chair, and SPY holders should expect every sentence of his press conference to be parsed for the Fed’s direction on inflation, employment, and the path of interest rates.
For investors holding broad index exposure through SPY or similar vehicles, the message is calibration, not capitulation. Late-cycle conditions can argue for tighter risk discipline, attention to position sizing, and patience on adding fresh exposure until Warsh’s first meeting reframes the path forward.
Bank of America introduced a credit card feature to let clients pay over time.
The bank’s Custom Pay Plan is one of three new offerings, along with a new loyalty program and credit monitoring services, according to a Wednesday (June 10) press release.
“With these tools, we’re rewarding our clients in more ways, giving them greater visibility into their financial health and more control over how they manage their money,” Holly O’Neill, president, consumer, retail and preferred at Bank of America, said in the release. “Whether someone is just starting their financial journey with us or has been a client for years, we’re committed to rewarding and empowering them each and every day.”
With the Custom Pay Plan, clients who make a purchase with an eligible Bank of America credit card can convert that transaction into a structured payment plan through the bank’s mobile app or online banking platform. From there, they can choose a repayment period, typically from three months to 18 months, the release said.
The launch of the program comes as consumers in the United States continue to embrace buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans. PYMNTS Intelligence found that the availability of these plans and merchant financing impact where consumers spend.
Financing seems to have the most influence in categories “where consumers have meaningful alternatives and time to compare them,” PYMNTS reported May 27.
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Categories like travel, food delivery and experiences showed high sensitivity to financing availability, while grocery and restaurant purchases were less affected, a sign that habit and immediacy still dominate regular spending decisions.
Financing availability becomes influential when shoppers view merchants as interchangeable. In these moments, installments can become part of the value proposition, fostering stickiness, rather than simply a checkout feature.
Meanwhile, Bank of America customers with a Customized Cash Rewards, Unlimited Cash Rewards or Travel Rewards credit card have access to its new Refer-a-Friend, which provides cash or points-based rewards to clients who convince friends or family to sign up for a card, the release said.
The bank also introduced My Credit, a tool aimed at letting customers stay on top of their credit profile without affecting their score. Clients can view their FICO score, get alerts about changes to that score, and use the bank’s Erica AI assistant to pull up their credit profile as needed, according to the release.
Key Takeaways BAC plans a real-time cross-border payments solution through Swift and CashPro next quarter.BAC targets remittances, gig-worker payouts and e-commerce payments to drive recurring fees.BAC's platform adds tracking, full-principal delivery and local-currency settlement. Bank of America’s (BAC - Free Report) planned launch of a cross-border real-time payments solution next quarter is expected to support fee revenues over time by giving corporate and commercial clients a faster, more transparent way to move money across countries. By offering instant payments through Swift and CashPro, BAC can reduce delays and uncertainty in global transactions, encouraging more clients to route cross-border payment activity through the bank.
The opportunity is meaningful because BAC is targeting high-volume payment areas, such as remittances, gig-worker payouts and e-commerce marketplace payments. While these transactions are often smaller in value, they occur frequently. As volumes increase, transaction-related fees can build into a steady recurring revenue stream, making the product attractive from a long-term revenue perspective.
The launch is also expected to help BAC deepen relationships with corporate and institutional clients. Companies using CashPro for real-time global payments may also turn to the bank for treasury, cash-management, foreign-exchange and working-capital services. This will likely create cross-selling opportunities and improve client stickiness.
Features such as real-time tracking, full principal delivery and local-currency settlement will improve client experience. Businesses want certainty around when money is sent, when it arrives and how much the receiver gets. By reducing delays and improving transparency, BAC can make its payments platform more valuable.
Overall, as demand for faster and more reliable cross-border payments grows, the launch is expected to help Bank of America capture a larger share of global payment flows and gradually strengthen its fee-based revenue stream.
How Are BAC’s Peers Competing in This Space?Global transaction banking peers such as JPMorgan (JPM - Free Report) and Citigroup (C - Free Report) are also investing in faster cross-border payment capabilities.
JPMorgan is strengthening its real-time cross-border payments capabilities through its blockchain-based Kinexys Digital Payments platform, which enables institutional clients to move deposits with JPMorgan instantly, including across borders and outside normal banking hours.
By supporting 24/7/365 payments, real-time transaction visibility, liquidity movement and offshore USD clearing, Kinexys positions JPMorgan as a leading large-bank competitor in tokenized payments and real-time treasury solutions.
Citigroup, conversely, is advancing its real-time cross-border payments capabilities by integrating Citi Token Services with its 24/7 USD Clearing platform. The solution enables institutional clients to move funds near-instantly across Citigroup and non-Citigroup accounts, initially in the U.K. and the United States, with plans to expand to more markets.
Bank of America’s Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesIn the past six months, BAC shares have lost 1.1% against the industry’s 2.2% growth.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, Bank of America trades at a 12-month trailing price-to-tangible book (P/TB) of 1.96X, below the industry average of 3.24.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BAC’s 2026 and 2027 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 16.8% and 14.2%, respectively. In the past week, earnings estimates for both years have been unchanged.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Bank of America currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
, /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America Corporation today announced the Board of Directors has authorized regular cash dividends on the outstanding shares or depositary shares of the following series of preferred stock:
Series of Preferred Stock
Dividend per Share
or Depositary Share1
Record Date
Payment Date
7.25% Non-Cumulative
Perpetual Convertible
Preferred Stock, Series L
$18.1250000
July 1
July 30
5.875% Non-Cumulative
Preferred Stock, Series HH
$0.3671875
July 1
July 24
4.375% Non-Cumulative
Preferred Stock, Series NN
$0.2734375
July 15
August 3
6.625% Fixed-Rate Reset Non-
Cumulative Preferred Stock,
Series OO
$16.5625000
July 15
August 3
4.125% Non-Cumulative
Preferred Stock, Series PP
$0.2578125
July 15
August 3
4.375% Fixed-Rate Reset Non-
Cumulative Preferred Stock,
Series RR
$10.9375000
July 1
July 27
6.125% Fixed-Rate Reset Non-
Cumulative Preferred Stock,
Series TT
$15.3125000
July 1
July 27
6.250% Fixed-Rate Reset Non-
Cumulative Preferred Stock,
Series UU
$15.6250000
July 1
July 27
1 Each series of preferred stock, other than Series L, is represented by depositary shares.
Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving nearly 70 million clients with approximately 3,500 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 59 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. As the #1 small business lender in the United States (FDIC), Bank of America offers industry leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors may contact
Lee McEntire, Bank of America
Phone: 1.980.388.6780
[email protected]
Jonathan G. Blum, Bank of America (Fixed Income)
Phone: 1.212.449.3112
[email protected]
Reporters may contact
Jocelyn Seidenfeld, Bank of America
Phone: 1.646.743.3356
[email protected]
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Walmart started testing delivery from Subway restaurants located within its stores this spring, Business Insider reported. Gerardo Mora/Getty Images for Subway Walmart is pushing into restaurant delivery. Its first goal: Getting you a sub sandwich on demand.
The big box retailer has been delivering meals from Subway restaurants located in Walmart stores for about a month, said Tracy Poulliot, vice president of e-commerce and marketing at Walmart. The retailer aims to have the delivery option live at all 1,400 Subways within Walmart stores by late July.
Business Insider first reported that Walmart was testing restaurant delivery.
Customers can place Subway orders for express delivery on their own using the Walmart app, the company said. In testing, though, many customers combined restaurant orders with groceries and last-minute items that they need into a single order, Poulliot said.
Walmart customers can use the retailer's app to place Subway orders. Walmart "We're seeing a lot of customers purchase their Subway meals in addition to their groceries," she told reporters Thursday at the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Walmart has spent years building its delivery business. The big box retailer now offers delivery in hours — or minutes — on everything from bananas to garden hoses from its 4,600 stores in the US. It uses a mix of independent contractors who work through Walmart's Spark delivery app and store employees to pick orders and deliver them to customers' homes.
Subway has had locations within Walmart stores for about 20 years, Damien Harmon, president of Subway North America, said in a video shown during Thursday's presentation.
Harmon relayed the experience of one Subway franchisee that operates restaurants within several Walmart locations, who said the delivery option is "a new avenue for growth and gives us another way to meet our customers where they are."
Executives on Thursday left the door open to expanding Walmart's restaurant delivery.
It's considering an integration with Sparky, Walmart's AI shopping assistant, which would allow customers to place restaurant orders with a simple AI prompt, Poulliot said.
Other national restaurants, such as Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, as well as regional chains such as California-based Wienerschnitzel, also have locations in some Walmart stores.
Walmart also sees a path to expand the delivery service to restaurants beyond its stores, said Greg Cathey, Walmart's senior vice president of digital fulfillment transformation.
"You can draw a circle around most Walmart stores, and almost all quick-service restaurant brands are located within five miles," he said.
Have a tip about Walmart or food delivery? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected]. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Dominick Reuter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, and Costco. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.
Alex Bitter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.
Walmart is offering delivery of freshly made meals from its largest in-store restaurant tenant, Subway.
This is the retailer’s first restaurant integration within Express Delivery, it said in a Thursday (June 4) press release.
Customers in select areas can order Subway through the Walmart app or Walmart.com, customize the meal down to individual toppings, add it to their cart alone or with items from Walmart, and have it delivered with Express Delivery in 30 minutes or less, according to the release.
The price of the meals will be consistent with that in the restaurants, and Express Delivery comes with a flat fee and no hidden costs, the release said.
Walmart launched the service in select stores across Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, and will expand it to 1,400 locations by the end of summer, according to the release. The retailer also plans to extend the service to other in-store restaurants.
“The future of retail is about bringing more of customers’ everyday needs into a single, seamless experience,” Tracy Poulliot, executive vice president, eCommerce and marketing at Walmart U.S., said in the release. “Bringing Subway delivery into the Walmart app is another way we’re using our proximity to customers and scale to make everyday decisions simpler and everyday life a little easier.”
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Damien Harmon, president of Subway North America, said in the release: “The integration of Subway delivery into the Walmart app and Walmart.com is a natural evolution of our 20-year relationship built on a shared commitment to value, freshness and everyday convenience.”
Walmart customers’ demand for speed and convenience drove a 26% increase in eCommerce sales and a 45% increase in delivery volume within Walmart U.S. in the most recent quarter, PYMNTS reported in May.
During an earnings call, Walmart executives repeatedly returned to the idea that faster fulfillment increases shopping frequency and broadens the range of purchases customers make with the retailer.
Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said Walmart can now reach approximately 60% of U.S. households in 30 minutes or less. He linked those capabilities to stronger engagement and higher participation in membership programs, which continue to become a larger part of the business.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Global Digital Shopping Index: The AI-Powered Shopper Has Arrived” found that across the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil, 28% of consumers said in March that their most recent purchase was made online.
Walmart WMT is moving deeper into fast delivery, adding Subway meals to its app as it looks to make restaurant orders part of the same experience as groceries and household essentials.
Starting this month, customers in select locations can order Subway through Walmart's app or website and get meals delivered in as little as 30 minutes. Orders can be placed on their own or added to a Walmart Express Delivery order. The move makes sense because Subway is Walmart's largest in store restaurant tenant, giving the retailer a built in partner to test the model.
The service is live in select stores across Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Walmart plans to expand Subway delivery to about 1,400 stores by late summer. Executive Greg Cathey said quick service restaurants are generally located within 5 miles of Walmart, suggesting this could become a larger opportunity over time.
the story is bigger than sandwiches. If Walmart scales restaurant delivery, it could add pressure on DoorDash DASH and Uber Eats UBER .
Walmart (WMT, Financials) is expanding its express delivery platform by adding Subway meals to its 30-minute delivery service, a move aimed at strengthening its e-commerce offering as competition in rapid delivery intensifies.
The retailer said the service, already available in select states, is expected to expand to roughly 1,400 Walmart locations by late summer. Subway is Walmart's largest in-store restaurant tenant, giving the company a broad footprint to scale the initiative.
Management indicated the rollout could be the first step in a broader strategy to integrate additional in-store restaurant partners into its delivery network. Walmart operates more than 4,600 U.S. stores, which also serve as fulfillment hubs for online orders.
The expansion comes as Walmart continues investing in convenience-focused services to compete more aggressively with Amazon. Earlier this year, the company broadened its 30-minute delivery option for groceries and general merchandise to dozens of cities across the United States.
Executives have highlighted strong momentum in store-fulfilled delivery, with usage more than doubling over the past two years as customers increasingly prioritize speed and convenience.
Investors will be watching whether Walmart's growing delivery ecosystem can drive higher customer engagement, increase order frequency and support long-term e-commerce market share gains.
Higher fuel prices from the Iran war have caused pain throughout the global economy. No one likes paying more money at the pump. Higher gasoline and diesel prices raise prices for everyone by driving up costs of business inventory, supplies, delivery, and freight shipping. But higher gas prices hit especially hard for lower-income people.
The world's largest retailer, Walmart (WMT +0.44%), could be especially vulnerable to higher gas prices. Its customer base tends to be lower-income households. If Walmart shoppers are forced to burn up more of their hard-earned dollars in their gas tanks, this could reduce their consumer discretionary spending.
According to Bloomberg, Walmart CEO John Furner said Wednesday that fuel prices are becoming "the stress point" for U.S. households. Walmart shares have gained about 5% year to date, underperforming the S&P 500 index.
Let's see if this retail stock is worth buying, or if investors should steer clear.
Image source: Getty Images.
Walmart customers are buying less than 10 gallons of gas at a time During the company's most recent quarterly earnings call on May 21, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said that while Walmart's higher-income customers are "spending with confidence," the lower-income customers are "more budget conscious and perhaps navigating financial distress."
Rainey also said that "the number of gallons that customers fill up with when they come to our fuel stations fell below 10 for the first time since 2022." This is a sobering stat. It goes to show just how hard some Walmart shoppers are getting hurt by high gas prices -- they're trying to ration their own gasoline.
Why Walmart shares have been down since May 21 Walmart stock has declined by about 11% since the company reported earnings on May 21. According to CNBC, the sell-off happened because Walmart's guidance for the rest of its fiscal year 2027 was underwhelming to investors.
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The company said on May 21 that it expects net sales to increase 3.5% to 4.5% for the year, with expected adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.75 to $2.85 -- lower than expectations of $2.91. Walmart shares are trading at a trailing 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 41.16, which suggests the company is richly valued. Even the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ +0.59%), which tracks the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index, has a lower P/E ratio (36.30).
If Walmart's earnings multiple is higher than that of some major tech stocks, and its expected earnings are disappointing analysts, that's a bad combination. I have previously written that Walmart was trading like a tech stock. But that was in February, right before the Iran war started and gas prices spiked.
This company has made valuable efforts to expand into e-commerce and gain market share with higher-income customers. But if gas prices stay high for the rest of 2026, Walmart might be more vulnerable to a sales slowdown than most major retailers.
Based on today's high valuation and the lingering uncertainty about gas prices, I wouldn't rate Walmart stock as a buy -- unless you're a patient investor and ready to hold the stock for five years or more.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT | WMT Price Prediction) fits the profile of a multi-decade compounder because the company has quietly built a high-margin digital flywheel that now compounds independently of any single store it operates.
The forever case rests on what is happening behind the storefront. Global advertising revenue rose 37% last quarter, with Walmart Connect up 44% excluding VIZIO. Membership fee revenue grew 17.4% globally, and Sam’s Club raised membership fees effective May 1, 2026. Marketplace sales climbed nearly 50%, the best showing in 10 quarters, and e-commerce now accounts for 23% of total net sales. As former CFO John David Rainey put it, advertising and membership together already represent “a quarter of our profits”. Those are software-like revenue streams attached to the largest retail customer base in the world.
Pillar One: Durability Without the Real Estate The digital businesses inherit the moat without inheriting the cost structure. Walmart U.S. comp sales rose 4.1%, general merchandise share gains were the strongest in five years, and management noted broad share gains particularly among upper-income households. Store-fulfilled delivery grew roughly 45%, turning 4,700-plus locations into last-mile fulfillment nodes that pure-play e-commerce rivals cannot replicate. Return on equity sits at 22.97%.
Pillar Two: Compounding Through Buybacks The dividend yield of roughly 0.80% will not pay anyone’s bills, and that is the catch. The compounding engine is the buyback. Walmart raised the annual dividend to $0.99 per share for FY27 from $0.94, authorized a new $30 billion repurchase program in February 2026 with $28.2 billion remaining, and retired 85.0 million shares for $8.1 billion across FY26. Free cash flow for the full year reached $14.92 billion, up 17.88%. Quarterly dividends have been paid without interruption for more than 25 years, surviving the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic without a cut.
Pillar Three: Built for Every Cycle The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index sits at 49.8, approaching recessionary levels, and Walmart is gaining share anyway. Beta of 0.652 reflects how the stock behaves when markets break. Over the past decade the shares have returned 489.97%, and over five years 165.4%, through a pandemic, an inflation shock, and a rate-hiking cycle.
Where It Will Lag In a low-inflation, high-growth bull market led by speculative technology names, a consumer staples retailer trading at 43 times trailing earnings and 39 times forward earnings will look slow. Q1 FY27 free cash flow turned negative at -$1.9 billion on capex of $6.7 billion, up 34%. That capex is funding the automation, delivery, and digital infrastructure that powers the advertising and marketplace growth in the first place. The lag is the price of the next decade of compounding.
The long-term thesis rests on compounding through buybacks and reinvested dividends rather than short-term price moves.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT | WMT Price Prediction) trades at $116.89, with the post-earnings pullback offering a more attractive entry into a defensive retailer whose digital flywheel keeps accelerating against a sticky inflation backdrop.
Walmart is reportedly trying to sell its workers on the benefits of artificial intelligence.
As the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (June 7), the retail goliath last week gathered thousands of its employees at its Arkansas headquarters to drive home the message that AI would enhance, and not eliminate, their jobs.
This effort, FT points out, comes amid worries that the technology could make some workers’ jobs obsolete. A recent report from job placement company Challenger, Gray and Christmas found that AI has been the number one reason companies gave for layoffs in the U.S. for the last three months.
And Walmart reportedly cut or moved 1,000 corporate employees last month to bring together its global technology and product teams.
However, executives at Walmart’s annual Associates Week gathering described a future where AI will transform how people work, but not necessarily take their jobs, FT said.
“Technology will power our future. But our associates will lead it.” Donna Morris, Walmart’s chief people officer, told employees. The company also announced that any Walmart staffer in the U.S. can now become certified in the use of OpenAI.
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FT noted that Walmart sped up its AI adoption last year when it recruited Instacart executive Daniel Danker to serve as executive vice-president for AI acceleration, product and design. He was paid $44 million last year, more than outgoing Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.
McMillon’s successor John Furner on Friday gave an award to a pair of Walmart engineers who had programmed a “vibe coding” platform being used throughout the company. It allows hourly-wage employees to create code to solve business problems, FT said.
The news comes days after Walmart shareholders rejected a proposal that would have required the company to compile a report on AI/automation’s impact in the workplace.
The proposal presented by United for Respect called on Walmart to explain how it plans to address and measure impact of the technology as it embeds AI across its operations.
“A report describing the principles guiding AI deployment, the metrics used to assess workforce impacts — such as job quality, compensation, training effectiveness, and equity — and the governance structures overseeing these systems would enable shareholders to evaluate whether Walmart’s AI strategy aligns with its public commitments, supports long-term value creation and mitigates workforce-related risks,” the proposal read.
Walmart’s board opposed the idea, arguing the company is committed to managing how AI and automation are deployed and the additional reporting would be unnecessary.
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Walmart is tapping into its enormous scale to get the most out of AI. Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Walmart is big, but it wants to be bigger.
The retail giant employs more than 2 million people. It serves hundreds of millions of customers each week across thousands of stores in the US and around the world. And it's not sitting still.
Walmart is now working to speed up its business with a major assist from AI in just about every aspect of its operation.
I got to see this firsthand during its annual shareholders meeting at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where executives and frontline workers shared how the technology is transforming retail.
AI is for everyoneFor starters, Walmart is using its scale to its advantage by equipping people at all levels of the company with the tools to wrangle AI.
"We want to democratize the access to learning and democratize the access to making a difference, so that people can learn and grow," CEO John Furner told reporters last week.
Walmart CEO John Furner. Dominick Reuter/Business Insider The most talked-about example was the new Code Puppy agent that Walmart Global Tech distinguished engineer Mike Pfaffenberger built and shared with the organization.
Walmart already has a dizzying number of agents and a handful of super-agents tailored for particular use cases, but Code Puppy was notable for its ability to help people across the organization vibecode their own solutions — from salaried software engineers to hourly forklift drivers.
Unlike companies that may centralize AI development within traditionally tech-focused departments, Walmart's approach accelerates the pace at which new ideas can arise from the front lines and spread throughout the global enterprise.
"It doesn't matter where the idea came from. It could be in Bangalore. It could be in Greater Toronto. It could be Mexico City. It could be in Wichita, Kansas. Wherever the best idea is, we should take that and scale it," Furner said. "We just simply surface what's already been built, and then we see the adoption rates go much faster."
Some workers want better guardrailsWalmart's embrace of AI is not without controversy, however.
A shareholder proposal backed by United for Respect, a coalition of retail workers, criticized the impact of AI and automation on frontline employees.
Ava Williams, an overnight stocker in Washington, presented the proposal during the Walmart shareholders meeting. She said the new AI-powered workflows push workers like her to cut corners as they race against unrealistic expectations.
"We are not asking Walmart to stop using technology. We are asking for technology that works for us, not against us," she said.
Shareholders rejected the measure, and the company said it has multiple channels for employees to share their ideas and concerns.
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider The company also officially launched a credentialing program it built with OpenAI that is available to every employee, fulfilling a commitment it announced back in September.
The training program is intended to help employees build practical confidence with AI. They learn to integrate the tools into the problems they face in the real world.
The company highlighted one such case: A logistics manager who completed a Google AI certification and used those skills to develop an agent that helps Walmart identify routes that would get drivers home faster with fewer empty trucks.
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Even the new delivery partnership with in-store Subway restaurants now comes with a hefty serving of AI.
Walmart order pickers already follow an AI-generated route through the store to fill the basket, and Walmart's head of digital fulfillment, Greg Cathey, said AI now also finds the right moment in that route to queue Subway workers to make the order.
"That is the AI that's timing everything to make sure the sandwich is going to be hot if it's hot — always fresh," Cathey said.
Deeper insights about what customers really wantOver at Walmart's warehouse club, Sam's Club Director of Consumer Insights Sue Jervis said she can now gain new details from the chain's fast-growing member feedback community thanks to the power of multimodal AI analysis.
She expressed a visceral disgust for five-star surveys and said the conversations and video clips she gets from participants give her a much more precise understanding of what really matters to them.
Thanks to AI, Jervis can tap into the 150,000-member group and extract not just what they're saying, but how they're saying it — the emotional register behind their feedback about the club's products and services.
Walmart Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire. Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Walmart is also learning more about customers who use the company's new Sparky chatbot, which acts as a kind of personal shopping assistant.
"We're learning a ton just from how they're interacting with Sparky relative to ways that maybe historically they have interacted with us," Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire told reporters.
The value of that interaction is significant enough that the company is not rushing to serve ads in the chat, focusing instead on ensuring customers are getting what they want from the experience.
"We see long natural language query strings that look very different than someone typing in 'men's shoes,'" he said. "That is in itself is a really interesting piece of information for us."
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Betting big on smaller thingsIt's telling that on Friday, Furner handed the President's Innovation Award to Pfaffenberger and his colleague, John Choi, for their work on Code Puppy.
"A vibe-coding tool that turns associates into engineers," Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar said. "They built a tool that supports the entire company."
Or, as Pfaffenberger asks in his documentation for the project, "Would you rather plow a field with one ox or 1,024 puppies? If you pick the ox, better slam that back button in your browser."
Walmart, big as it is, is betting on the puppies.
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Dominick Reuter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, and Costco. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.
AI Artificial Intelligence Walmart More E-Commerce Retail
Walmart (WMT - Free Report) has been one of the most searched-for stocks on Zacks.com lately. So, you might want to look at some of the facts that could shape the stock's performance in the near term.
Over the past month, shares of this world's largest retailer have returned -8.9%, compared to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +1.9% change. During this period, the Zacks Retail - Supermarkets industry, which Walmart falls in, has lost 8.9%. The key question now is: What could be the stock's future direction?
While media releases or rumors about a substantial change in a company's business prospects usually make its stock 'trending' and lead to an immediate price change, there are always some fundamental facts that eventually dominate the buy-and-hold decision-making.
Revisions to Earnings EstimatesRather than focusing on anything else, we at Zacks prioritize evaluating the change in a company's earnings projection. This is because we believe the fair value for its stock is determined by the present value of its future stream of earnings.
We essentially look at how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to reflect the impact of the latest business trends. And if earnings estimates go up for a company, the fair value for its stock goes up. A higher fair value than the current market price drives investors' interest in buying the stock, leading to its price moving higher. This is why empirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock price movements.
For the current quarter, Walmart is expected to post earnings of $0.74 per share, indicating a change of +8.8% from the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed -1.2% over the last 30 days.
For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $2.89 points to a change of +9.5% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has changed -0.1%.
For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $3.27 indicates a change of +13.3% from what Walmart is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed +0.6%.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool -- the Zacks Rank -- is a more conclusive indicator of a stock's near-term price performance, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for Walmart.
The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:
12 Month EPS
Projected Revenue GrowthEven though a company's earnings growth is arguably the best indicator of its financial health, nothing much happens if it cannot raise its revenues. It's almost impossible for a company to grow its earnings without growing its revenue for long periods. Therefore, knowing a company's potential revenue growth is crucial.
In the case of Walmart, the consensus sales estimate of $186.4 billion for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +5.1%. The $749.55 billion and $783.26 billion estimates for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +5.1% and +4.5%, respectively.
Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryWalmart reported revenues of $177.75 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +7.3%. EPS of $0.66 for the same period compares with $0.61 a year ago.
Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $174.56 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +1.83%. The EPS surprise was +1.54%.
Over the last four quarters, Walmart surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. The company topped consensus revenue estimates each time over this period.
ValuationNo investment decision can be efficient without considering a stock's valuation. Whether a stock's current price rightly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects is an essential determinant of its future price performance.
While comparing the current values of a company's valuation multiples, such as price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), with its own historical values helps determine whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of the reasonability of the stock's price.
As part of the Zacks Style Scores system, the Zacks Value Style Score (which evaluates both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics) organizes stocks into five groups ranging from A to F (A is better than B; B is better than C; and so on), making it helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.
Walmart is graded D on this front, indicating that it is trading at a premium to its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.
Bottom LineThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about Walmart. However, its Zacks Rank #3 does suggest that it may perform in line with the broader market in the near term.
Key Takeaways WMT's global e-commerce sales rose 26%, with growth across U.S., International and Sam's Club. Walmart U.S. adjusted operating income rose 5.7% to $6 billion as e-commerce economics improved.WMT store-fulfilled delivery grew 45%, and 36% arrived in under three hours. Walmart Inc. (WMT - Free Report) continues to demonstrate how its omnichannel model is evolving beyond traditional retail, with e-commerce becoming an increasingly important driver of growth and profitability. The company’s first-quarter fiscal 2027 results underscored strong digital momentum, supported by faster fulfillment capabilities, marketplace expansion and growing contributions from higher-margin revenue streams.
Global e-commerce sales increased 26% in the quarter, led by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery as well as marketplace growth. The strength was evident across segments, with Walmart U.S. e-commerce sales rising 26%, Walmart International e-commerce sales advancing 27%, and Sam’s Club U.S. e-commerce sales growing 23%.
As digital sales scale, the focus is shifting from growth alone to the profitability of that growth. Walmart U.S. adjusted operating income rose 5.7% to $6 billion, while the adjusted operating income rate improved 6 basis points to 5.1%. The gain was aided by improved e-commerce economics, Walmart+ membership growth and other income benefits.
The company’s extensive store network remains a key advantage. Store-fulfilled delivery in Walmart U.S. grew about 45% in the quarter, and more than 36% of store-fulfilled deliveries were completed in less than three hours. Globally, Walmart delivered more than 3.5 billion units on the same day or the next day.
Even so, margin expansion remains a work in progress. Consolidated gross profit rate increased 6 basis points to 24.3%, but operating expenses continued to face pressure from higher fuel costs, depreciation and healthcare expenses. While near-term expenses remained elevated, the quarter suggested that Walmart’s growing e-commerce scale is increasingly being supported by better fulfillment economics and a richer mix of higher-margin digital revenues.
E-commerce Gains Put TGT and COST Margins in FocusTarget Corporation (TGT - Free Report) is also benefiting from growing digital demand. In its first quarter, TGT reported comparable digital sales growth of 8.9%, driven by more than 27% growth in same-day delivery through Target Circle 360. Gross margin expanded to 29% from 28.2%, while adjusted operating margin improved to 4.5% from 3.7%.
Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST - Free Report) continues to post robust online-related growth. Digitally enabled comparable sales increased 21.1% in May and 21.6% for the first 39 weeks of the fiscal year. Total comparable sales rose 12.5% in May, while net sales increased 14.5% to $24.01 billion. COST’s strong digitally enabled sales growth highlights the growing importance of e-commerce and convenience-led shopping across the retail landscape.
WMT Stock Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesShares of Walmart have risen 22% over the past year compared with the industry’s growth of 20.3%.
WMT Price Performance Versus Industry
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, WMT trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 39.36, higher than the industry’s average of 35.83.
WMT Valuation Compared to Industry
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Walmart (WMT +0.44%) reported earnings in May, and while the business did well, the stock has been sliding in recent weeks, down around 8% in the past month. Its valuation has now fallen below $1 trillion, although the stock remains in positive territory for the year.
For what's been a fairly safe investment to hang on to, it may be a concerning situation for investors. What's behind the sudden bearishness? Could this be a good time to buy the top retail stock on the dip, or could there be greater headwinds looming?
Image source: Getty Images.
The market may be more worried about what lies ahead When Walmart reported earnings last month, its growth was impressive, with its revenue rising by more than 7% and its operating income also growing by 5% for the period ending April 30.
But investors are likely worried about how the business will perform amid rising oil prices due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and worsening economic conditions; consumer sentiment has been falling, which may impact demand in future quarters.
Walmart's management tried to address those concerns on its latest earnings call, with Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey stating, "While there are certainly pressures on the consumer, let me reiterate: our business is strong." The market is clearly not convinced that the business is in tip-top shape, especially with its earnings results not beating analyst expectations on the bottom line in the most recent quarter.
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The stock's valuation could make it difficult for it to rally Shares of Walmart are up over 7% this year, but the problem is that the stock isn't cheap these days. It's trading at more than 40 times its trailing earnings, which is a steep multiple to pay for a retailer that's generating single-digit growth, and which may encounter greater headwinds in upcoming quarters if consumers cut back on spending. By comparison, the average stock in the S&P 500 trades at only 26 times its earnings.
Although Walmart's business may indeed be fine, especially over the long run, that doesn't mean the stock itself is a good buy. At a high valuation, investors are pricing in significant future growth, and if reality doesn't align with those expectations, a correction may be inevitable. That's why I believe the stock may fall further as the year goes on, as its valuation has become inflated in recent years. At its current price, I just don't think it's a good buy.
In February 2026, Amazon.com Inc. NASDAQ: AMZN supplanted Walmart Inc. NASDAQ: WMT as the world’s largest company in terms of revenue. This wasn’t a surprise to industry observers, but it was reinforced when Fortune confirmed the results, placing Amazon at the top of its Fortune 500 list.
The news isn’t having much impact on either stock’s price. As of June 8, both stocks are up a little more than 6% for the year.
Get Walmart alerts:
Walmart Today
$121.04 +0.54 (+0.45%)
As of 04:00 PM Eastern
52-Week Range$93.62▼
$135.15Dividend Yield0.82%
P/E Ratio42.47
Price Target$138.85
But over a longer horizon, it’s Walmart that has rewarded shareholders with a larger total return.
That’s a story that’s likely to continue for a reason that may surprise some investors. The death of physical retail has been greatly exaggerated, and it's an arena where Amazon simply doesn't compete with Walmart.
Yet even that edge doesn't fully capture the real story: Walmart may be a stronger proxy for technology stocks than Amazon is a proxy for retail stocks. If that's right, Walmart doesn't just merit a premium valuation—it may need to be rerated entirely.
Walmart’s Physical Moat Is a Digital AdvantageAmazon essentially created the category of e-commerce. So it makes sense that the company has an almost impenetrable lead among online shoppers. But Walmart has made strides in closing that gap, and in doing so, it’s showing why its business model has some advantages.
First, the company’s retail footprint of over 4,600 stores doubles as fulfillment nodes, without the added expense of building new facilities. This enables curbside pickup, which has become a habit-forming tool for shoppers. Plus, the company can use those stores for same-day delivery, which Amazon can’t match on unit economics.
Walmart Connect (Advertising) Is the Margin StoryThe most underappreciated line item in Walmart's financials may come from Walmart Connect, the company's U.S. retail media platform. In fiscal year 2026 (FY2026), Walmart Connect generated $6.4 billion in global ad revenue, a 46% YOY increase. In the most recent quarter, Walmart Connect grew 44% domestically, a rate that dwarfs the company's low-single-digit top-line growth.
This has a significant impact on the bottom line. CFO John David Rainey has noted that advertising and membership income now account for roughly one-third of Walmart's operating profit. High-margin ad dollars are effectively subsidizing the lower-margin retail operation, a dynamic Wall Street recognized years ago when it rerated Amazon's multiple upward on the strength of its ad segment.
Even more noteworthy, Walmart is still in the early innings. Its advertising revenue represents roughly 1% of gross merchandise value, compared to approximately 8% for Amazon. That gap gives the company, and WMT, a long runway—and investors who wait for Walmart's ad business to mature before repricing the stock may find themselves late to the trade.
Sam's Club as the Proof of ConceptIf you want to see where the Walmart flagship is heading, look at Sam's Club. The $90 billion warehouse division has become the clearest demonstration that digital engagement and physical retail aren't in conflict.
Membership income posted double-digit growth for five consecutive quarters through Q4 2025, with digital penetration hitting an all-time high. Scan & Go adoption—the app-based checkout feature that lets members skip the register entirely—surged 500 basis points in a single quarter, and roughly 40% of Sam's transactions are now digital.
The Grapevine, Texas, prototype club runs at 100% Scan & Go participation. Members who shop digitally visit three times more often, buy across twice as many categories, and renew their memberships at meaningfully higher rates.
Sam's Club has announced plans to remodel all 600 of its existing locations while opening approximately 15 new clubs per year, with a stated goal of doubling membership over the next decade.
The Chart Points to an Inflection PointWMT dropped approximately 7% the day of its Q1 earnings report for FY2027. The report showed a solid double beat with high single-digit year-over-year (YOY) gains. The point of contention was the guidance, as it was with many retailers.
Specifically, Walmart is facing the unknown of higher tariff-related costs and what that could mean for its core customer. That said, the sell-off found a floor right around the 200-day simple moving average (SMA).
Analysts remain generally bullish on WMT with a consensus price target of $138.85. That’s about 15% above the price as of this writing. It would also reconfirm the highs the stock made in February and May of this year.
2 Great Stocks—Totally Different PurposesAMZN has been a wonderful stock for long-term investors, and it will continue to be in the future. However, this is a case of knowing where revenue growth is coming from. For Amazon, that increasingly means Amazon Web Services (AWS), which accounted for $128.7 billion in revenue in 2025.
Amazon still delivered $588.2 billion from its retail-related sales, but that number is well below Walmart, which comes from its blend of physical locations and growing digital efforts.
The reliance on retail is a reason that Walmart pays a dividend and Amazon does not. But even though that dividend is modest, it’s a safe payout that has increased for 53 consecutive years. And this year will make 54. After its stock split in January 2024, WMT is attractively priced for investors to start accumulating and letting the impact of compounding work to their advantage.
Should You Invest $1,000 in Walmart Right Now?Before you consider Walmart, you'll want to hear this.
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Stock market investors often have to make a trade-off between stability and growth. That's because the fastest-growing companies often have riskier business models, which leads to more volatility. That said, Walmart (WMT +0.44%) has recently begun turning this axiom on its head.
Shares in the blue-chip retailer have risen by an impressive 401% over the past 10 years, far outpacing the S&P 500's return of just 251%. And while the company has practically no exposure to glamorous growth opportunities such as generative AI, its massive scale and booming e-commerce business have helped keep its stock relevant.
Let's dig deeper to decide whether Walmart still has millionaire-maker potential.
Image source: Getty Images.
The bluest of blue chip stocks It's hard to think of a more stable and established American business than Walmart. Since its founding in 1962, the big-box retailer has leveraged its immense scale and distribution networks to offer unparalleled selection and low prices to consumers all over the country.
And while investors may be tempted to overlook the grocery business because of its extremely low profit margins, often hovering between 1% and 3%, Walmart makes it attractive by spreading a tiny bit of profit across tens of billions of items, creating a winning recipe that keeps both customers and shareholders coming back for more. The company's business model is also relatively safe because groceries are consumer staple items that tend to maintain demand, even in economic downturns.
Walmart's safety is a big selling point at this time of economic uncertainty related to the war in Iran and rising fuel costs. In March, analysts at Goldman Sachs put the 12-month recession probability at 30%.
But while the bad news seems to dominate the headlines, America's macroeconomic situation remains extremely unpredictable. In March, U.S. payroll jobs data beat expectations, adding 172,000 jobs and bringing the unemployment rate to just 4.3%. The economy therefore appears to be expanding instead of contracting. But Walmart can thrive in either scenario.
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What about the growth opportunities? Because Walmart is a mature company in a highly established industry, investors shouldn't expect it to deliver eye-popping growth. The bigger a business is, the more effort is required to move the needle. And over the long term, most of Walmart's expansion is likely to come from slow, reliable trends such as GDP, population growth, and even inflation. That said, management is taking some successful steps to speed things up a little.
One of the most promising opportunities is in e-commerce, where years of heavy investment are beginning to pay off by creating a business that has become a serious player with a U.S. market share of 9.2%. Walmart's e-commerce segment grew 26% year over year in the first quarter, helping the company's overall top line grow 7.3% to $177.8 billion in the period.
Despite being somewhat late to the party, Walmart already has a massive economic moat in e-commerce because of its logistics network and a web of thousands of brick-and-mortar stores that serve as delivery hubs for nearby communities. The company's membership platform, Walmart+, also helps ensure consumer loyalty through a variety of perks and loss leaders, similar to the strategy Amazon Prime employs.
And while none of these efforts will transform Walmart into a hypergrowth tech stock, they help the company maintain its dominant market share in retail and ensure it doesn't stagnate despite its maturity.
With a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of 41, Walmart stock is quite expensive compared with the S&P 500 average of 22, so it probably won't make you a millionaire anytime soon. That said, the company deserves a premium because of its quality and safe business. And over the long haul, investors should expect it to continue outperforming the index, especially as growth drivers such as e-commerce continue to scale up.
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A Walmart automated distribution center in Mexico. Bloomberg/Getty Images America's biggest retailer is on a mission to become America's fastest.
One key piece of Walmart's mission is automating its supply chain. The retailer has spent the past several years plowing cash into building new facilities equipped with an army of robots, coordinated by AI.
That money is paying off in terms of raw speed.
What makes these distribution centers especially powerful is that they use store-level data to direct robots to arrange pallets, making it easier for workers to restock aisles, Walmart US CEO David Guggina told the Oppenheimer Consumer Growth and E-commerce conference on Tuesday.
Store workers used to spend hours unloading a truck. Now they can do so in a fraction of that time.
"Moving to intelligently layered pallets allows us to unload that trailer in minutes," Guggina said.
The distribution centers could also know which pallets contain the most urgent supplies for a given store and load those pallets onto the truck last, so they can be unloaded first, he said.
Guggina also said the company expects to have 16 of these next-generation distribution centers by the end of the year.
The combination of automation and inventory visibility is helping the company run a better supply chain, improve stores, and cut costs. Those savings, he said, allow Walmart to continue investing in lower prices for customers.
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Dominick Reuter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, and Costco. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.
Walmart AI Artificial Intelligence More automation Retail Logistics
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Dominick Reuter/Business Insider Retailers like Walmart are wading into AI-powered shopping, and their ads are coming, too.
Walmart's chief growth officer, Seth Dallaire, said this new tech calls for a more strategic approach to advertising that can improve the shopping experience.
The retail giant has been testing ads in its AI-powered shopping assistant, Sparky, since last fall, but the company has said the presence of sponsored listings in the chat is significantly lower than what customers see in conventional search results.
"We'll be careful to watch our customers and how they're using these tools," he said Wednesday during the Evercore ISI Consumer and Retail conference. "Advertising and retail media will have a role to play because it helps customers shop. It's not an interruptive experience, it's contextually relevant."
Dallaire oversees Walmart's ads business, which has become a significant revenue stream in its own right over the last few years. Its revenue grew 46% last year to $6.4 billion. Its latest moves are setting the company up to capture a slice of the growing pie of AI advertising dollars.
At the same time, Dallaire is in charge of growing Walmart's e-commerce marketplace and Walmart Plus membership program, and said ads also have to improve merchandise sales and member experience.
If ads overwhelm a customer and cause them to abandon their cart without making a purchase, that doesn't work for Dallaire.
He said advertising can help introduce shoppers to new products.
"I like to be exposed to new products," he said. "Advertising plays a critical role in that. In fact, it's very similar to merchandising."
For now, Dallaire said Walmart is benefiting more from learning how people interact with its Sparky shopping assistant than it is from the ads it has included in the chatbot.
"The types of prompts that we get from customers in those agentic environments are quite different than what maybe historically we've seen," he said.
For example, a customer might tell Sparky they're concerned about allergies and are looking for a laundry detergent that could help. Previously, they would have simply asked for fragrance-free detergent. With these longer conversations, Walmart doesn't have to make as many guesses about what shoppers want and risk serving up an irrelevant ad.
"If that's how our customers are coming to us to shop," he said, "we need to orient ourselves around that."
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Dominick Reuter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Dominick Reuter is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider, primarily covering Walmart, Target, and Costco. His stories tend to focus on issues and trends that affect employees and customers.Prior to joining BI in 2019, Dominick worked for more than a decade as an independent photojournalist covering a wide range of stories for global wire services and newspapers, including Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Agence France-Presse.Dominick studied photojournalism at Boston University and later earned a Masters in business and economics journalism from Columbia University.If you're an employee or customer with a story to share, please contact me via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750.
AI Artificial Intelligence Advertising More E-Commerce Walmart
June will be a big month for omnichannel retailer promotions.
Amazon, Walmart, Target, Kohl’s and Staples have each announced sales events that begin this month and overlap or partially overlap.
Chain Store Age reported on the events in a Thursday (June 11) report, saying that retailers’ counter-promotions to Amazon’s Prime Day followed that event’s shift from its traditional July timeframe to June.
Amazon announced June 2 that Prime Day will be held June 23-26. The event is open solely to Prime members. Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani told CNBC in a June 2 report that groceries and household essentials will be a “real focus” of this year’s event, with produce, hot dog buns and meats for as low as $1, and 50% off some personal care items.
Walmart announced June 9 that its Walmart Deals savings event will run June 22-28 and will take place both online and in stores. Eligible members of the Walmart+ paid membership program will get early access to an online assortment of deals that will be available only to them for the first 24 hours and then becoming available to all customers.
Target announced June 2 that Target Circle Deal Days will be held June 23-26, with current members of the Target Circle 360 paid membership tier getting early access starting June 22. The sale event is held both online and in stores and offers members of the free Target Circle loyalty program exclusive access to savings.
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Kohl’s announced Wednesday (June 10) that Kohl’s Deal Days will run June 23-28. This year’s event is two days longer than last year’s. The sales event is offered both in stores and online, and it offers free shipping on all Kohls.com orders. The event includes an Ultimate Kohl’s Cash Giveaway in stores on June 27-28 as well as Kohl’s Daily Deals online and in stores.
Staples announced Tuesday (June 9) that its Easy Deal Days will be held in store and online June 21 through July 4. The event offers savings to all customers as well as exclusive pricing and bonus points offers for members of the company’s Easy Rewards program. Select offers will be available only during the first week of the event, June 21-27.
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Focus List Spotlight: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM - Free Report) Headquartered in New York, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is one of the biggest global banks with assets worth $4.90 trillion and total stockholders’ equity worth $364 billion as of March 31, 2026. With operations in more than 60 countries, the company (incorporated under Delaware law in 1968) is one of the largest financial service firms globally.
On October 10, 2016, JPM was added to the Focus List at $68.11 per share. Shares have increased 358.63% to $312.37 since then, and the company is a #3 (Hold) on the Zacks Rank.
For fiscal 2026, seven analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.61 to $22.4. JPM boasts an average earnings surprise of 7.4%.
Additionally, JPM's earnings are expected to grow 10.1% for the current fiscal year.
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Kevin Warsh is now chairman of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. If past comments from Warsh are any indication, then big changes could be coming to the Fed and the banking industry.
Warsh has spoken publicly about how he thinks the Fed has played too large a role in financial markets, whether through its transparency about future interest rate policy or the size of the Fed's balance sheet.
It's also worth noting that the Fed regulates bank holding companies and has significant control over bank regulation, particularly for large banks. Here's what a Warsh-led Fed means for big banks like JPMorgan Chase (JPM +2.28%) and Bank of America.
Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok.
Banks are looking at a higher-for-longer rate environment It's hard to know exactly what approach Warsh will take to interest rates as the new board chair.
In the months leading up to his confirmation for the role, Warsh seemed to suggest that artificial intelligence productivity gains would pave the way for the Fed to cut interest rates. However, recent economic data is really forcing his hand in the opposite direction.
The labor market has seemingly firmed up during the past three months and now seems to be on solid footing. Meanwhile, inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target, so Warsh's hands are tied right now. The market widely expects Warsh to keep rates unchanged for his first several meetings, with the Fed's next move now expected to be an interest rate hike.
Warsh has talked about changing the way the Fed looks at inflation, but that framework could take some time to develop, so banks probably can expect a higher-for-longer rate environment.
Assuming the yield curve remains steep, meaning shorter-duration bonds continue to yield less than longer-duration ones, this can actually be favorable to bank lending businesses. Banks tend to borrow money short-term at low rates and lend it out long-term at higher rates, so a steep yield curve allows them to make a spread between the money they pay for deposits and the money they earn on loans and bonds.
Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase both predict net interest income to rise about 7% or more in 2026 from the previous year.
Higher-for-longer rates aren't always so great for investment banking and asset and wealth management, but other factors also affect these businesses, namely, artificial intelligence.
Trillion-dollar initial public offerings (IPOs) are helping the large investment banks earn enormous fees, while AI in general continues to move the market broadly higher, which is good for asset and wealth management.
The flip side of higher rates is that they can pressure consumer and business balance sheets, as well as real estate. This can lead to depressed lending activity or higher loan losses.
How a smaller Fed balance sheet could impact banks Warsh has also been vocal about his desire to shrink the Fed's $6.7 trillion balance sheet. Warsh believes a larger Fed balance sheet and more liquidity in the economy favor wealthier people with assets and provide too much support to financial markets.
This will take time because shrinking the Fed's balance sheet can be tricky. However, in general, a smaller Fed balance sheet will have both pros and cons for large banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.
It would likely hurt banks because removing liquidity can slow the economy, and large banks are closely tied to the health of the U.S. economy. Less liquidity could mean tighter lending conditions and less money sloshing around that can work its way into private equity, venture capital, stocks, and other alternative assets.
However, the Fed has previously gotten into trouble when it shrank its balance sheet too quickly, lowering bank reserves that many financial players rely on. In 2019, reserves drained too quickly, triggering excess demand in the overnight repo market and causing short-term repo rates to soar. The Fed eventually had to inject liquidity.
On the other hand, shrinking the Fed's balance sheet can also steepen the yield curve because the Fed is no longer buying various bonds. So, as debt is issued by the government, there would likely be a larger supply of bonds in the market, which would decrease demand, leading to lower bond prices and higher bond yields.
Additionally, if Warsh is able to eventually cut interest rates, which he certainly wants to do whenever feasible, that would likely further bring down the yields on shorter-duration bonds, which tend to be more heavily influenced by the federal funds rate controlled by the Fed.
That could really steepen the yield curve, which, as I mentioned, would likely be great for bank lending businesses.
Warsh has previously favored bank deregulation Finally, as one of the key bank regulators, Warsh seems more likely to favor deregulation, which the large banks have already begun to enjoy under President Donald Trump.
"I don't believe the Fed is owed any particular deference in bank regulatory and supervisory policy," Warsh said in a Wall Street Journal opinion column last year, adding the U.S. Treasury Department should play a larger role in bank regulation.
Based on these comments, Warsh is likely to push for less bank regulation by the Fed, which would likely translate into easier annual stress testing and support for lower regulatory capital and liquidity requirements, all of which are favorable for large banks.
It also likely means faster approvals for large bank mergers and acquisitions, although JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America can't typically acquire banks directly because they already have more than 10% U.S. deposit market share.
Ultimately, Warsh should be favorable for large banks in terms of regulation.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM +2.28%) is a driving force of the broader economy. And the gigantic bank has been a huge winner thanks to strong fundamental performance. During the past decade, its shares have generated a total return of 527% (as of June 8). That gain comes up well ahead of smaller rival Bank of America (BAC +1.56%), whose shares delivered a total return of 369% during the same time.
From the market's perspective, investors might struggle to find differences between these two companies. After all, they each have a meaningful presence in different areas of the financial services sector.
But JPMorgan Chase trades at a price-to-book (P/B) ratio of 2.4, representing a sizable 71% premium to Bank of America's 1.4 multiple. What's causing this large valuation gap? And does it tell us anything about the investment implications of these two financial stocks?
Image source: JPMorgan Chase.
The key performance metrics paint a clear picture There are numerous variables investors can examine to understand why the market values JPMorgan Chase at a significant premium to its banking counterpart. Let's start with some key financial metrics.
JPMorgan Chase's return on tangible common equity (23%), efficiency ratio (54%), and net profit margin (33%) in the first quarter were all better than what Bank of America reported.
JPMorgan Chase has a stronger market position in areas that generate non-interest fee income, adding stability. It collects much greater revenue from activities like investment banking and asset management.
To Bank of America's credit, it has the leading market share in the U.S. consumer deposit market. But JPMorgan Chase's total deposit base of $2.7 trillion is larger in an absolute sense. Nonetheless, the spread between what it earns on interest-bearing assets and what it pays on interest-bearing liabilities of 2.01% is 46% higher than Bank of America's 1.38%. This supports a cost advantage.
Leadership has an impact These are no doubt important metrics to pay attention to, and they highlight the superior operations of JPMorgan Chase. But investors will also want to take a closer look at their management teams, specifically the chief executive officers (CEO).
Jamie Dimon has been the CEO of JPMorgan Chase since 2006. He gets a lot of credit for successfully navigating the business through the 2008 financial crisis, which decimated the entire industry, without needing a government bailout. This sharpened the company's stringent risk management practices.
He also managed through acquisitions and directed technology investments to make JPMorgan Chase the biggest bank in the U.S. Dimon is one of the most highly regarded corporate leaders in the world.
Brian Moynihan deserves praise as well, having been the CEO of Bank of America since 2010, when it was in a troubled state. He turned the company into a highly profitable and tech-forward financial institution.
However, he doesn't have the same public visibility and investor appreciation that Dimon does, which might also be a contributing factor to his stock's valuation.
Today's Change
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What's the opportunity for investors? In addition to JPMorgan Chase's more favorable financial metrics, its profit gains also stand out. During the past decade, the company's diluted earnings per share climbed at a compound annual rate of 12.8%. That's faster than Bank of America's yearly clip of 11.3%.
Taking everything into account, it makes sense why JPMorgan Chase trades at a notable premium to its industry peer. Any rational investor would conclude that it's deserving of the valuation. Its robust position in non-interest and fee-generating activities, greater scale, and better profits support this view.
But does Bank of America's discount mean that there's a buying opportunity here? Not necessarily, because the market isn't automatically going to bid up this bank stock's valuation to match JPMorgan Chase's P/B ratio.
For investors seeking adequate exposure to the financial services industry as part of a diversified portfolio, owning both companies is a reasonable approach.
