Walmart shares gain for a fifth straight session on Friday, retailer restarts grocery delivery service directly to customers’ fridges

Walmart Inc said last week that it would relaunch a service, which offers the delivery of groceries straight to customers’ refrigerators, as the retailer explores new ways of offering less costly and fast delivery of on-line orders.

Starting in the fall, the service will be provided to more than 1 million clients at locations such as Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), Kansas City (Missouri) and Vero Beach (Florida).

Walmart shares closed higher for a fifth consecutive trading session in New York on Friday. The stock went up 0.90% ($0.95) to $106.06, after touching an intraday high at $106.39, or a price level not seen since February 2nd 2018 ($106.47).

Shares of Walmart Inc have risen 13.86% so far in 2019 compared with a 14.62% gain for the benchmark index, S&P 500 (SPX).

In 2018, Walmart’s stock went down 5.67%, thus, it outperformed the S&P 500, which registered a 6.24% loss.

The service had initially been tested by Walmart in 2017 in cooperation with smart security company August Home and third-party courier firm Deliv. The test was discontinued in 2018.

Now, Walmart intends to use vehicles as well as workers (people employed with the company for at least 1 year) of its own.

According to Marc Lore, Walmart’s head of US e-commerce, the retailer is to take advantage of smart entry technology and a proprietary, wearable camera in order to get into customers’ homes.

According to CNN Money, the 27 analysts, offering 12-month forecasts regarding Walmart Inc’s stock price, have a median target of $113.00, with a high estimate of $120.00 and a low estimate of $95.00. The median estimate represents a 6.54% upside compared to the closing price of $106.06 on June 7th.

The same media also reported that 13 out of 30 surveyed investment analysts had rated Walmart Inc’s stock as “Buy”, while 10 – as “Hold”. On the other hand, 1 analyst had recommended selling the stock.

Weekly Pivot Levels

By using the traditional method of calculation, the weekly levels of importance for Walmart Inc (WMT) are presented as follows:

Central Pivot Point – $104.62
R1 – $107.83
R2 – $109.61
R3 – $112.82
R4 – $116.04

S1 – $102.84
S2 – $99.63
S3 – $97.85
S4 – $96.08