Spending Per Trip Has Fallen at Sam’s Club for Four Straight Quarters. It Has Not Fallen Once at Walmart U.S.

Sam’s Club U.S. reported net sales of $25.7 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, up 8.8 percent, or $22.1 billion and up 4.5 percent excluding fuel. Comparable sales excluding fuel grew 4.4 percent against 5.9 percent a year ago.

Underneath that comp, transactions excluding fuel grew 7.0 percent while average ticket excluding fuel fell 2.5 percent.

Ticket Crossed Below Zero in Q3 FY26 and Has Fallen Every Quarter Since

Walmart publishes both figures in every quarterly release. Pulled from eight consecutive releases:

Ticket crossed below zero in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 and has declined further in each of the three quarters since. Transactions bottomed in the same quarter the crossing occurred and have accelerated in each quarter since, from 3.9 percent to 7.0 percent. Walmart notes that the Q3 FY25 comp reflects roughly 120 basis points of positive impact from port disruptions, which affects that quarter’s comparison.

Several qualifications are required before reading behavior into this. Part of the decline is price. Walmart attributes roughly 40 basis points of comp headwind at Sam’s to pharmacy deflation tied to maximum fair price regulation, and cites price investments in its gross profit discussion for the segment. Walmart also reports that transactions and total unit volumes both increased, so members are buying more units in aggregate. Units per trip are not disclosed. Nothing in the releases allows the negative 2.5 percent to be separated into deflation, category mix, and units per trip.

Walmart U.S. Ticket Stayed Positive Through All Eight Quarters

Walmart U.S. average ticket grew 2.1 percent in the third quarter of fiscal 2025, 1.8 percent in the fourth, 2.8 and 3.1 and 2.7 percent through the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, 2.0 percent in the fourth, and 1.1 percent in each of the first two quarters of fiscal 2027. Positive in every one.

The honest version of that contrast includes a figure that softens it. Walmart reports total like-for-like inflation at Walmart U.S. of 1.4 percent in the second quarter, against ticket growth of 1.1 percent. Spend per trip at Walmart U.S. is running slightly below inflation, so real spend per trip is easing there too. Walmart does not disclose like-for-like inflation for Sam’s, so the same calculation cannot be run on the club.

What the comparison establishes is narrower than a single cause and still worth having. Both banners are seeing spend per trip soften. Only Sam’s has crossed into nominal decline, only Sam’s is four quarters into it, and only Sam’s is pairing it with accelerating trip counts. A purely macroeconomic explanation would show up in both at similar magnitude. It does not. What separates them could be format, category mix, member income profile, or fuel exposure, and the disclosures do not distinguish among those.

The Growth Is Arriving Through Orders the Member Never Assembles

Sam’s Club eCommerce grew 26 percent in the quarter and now represents roughly 20 percent of net sales excluding fuel, up about 350 basis points. Club-fulfilled delivery produced triple digit growth. Scan and Go adoption rose roughly 110 basis points. Walmart reports that Sam’s can reach 65 percent of U.S. households in under three hours, with more than a quarter of fast delivery orders arriving in under an hour.

Take the eCommerce contribution to comp that Walmart publishes beside the comp figure, roughly 450 basis points this quarter against a 4.4 percent comp, and the portion of comparable sales originating from a member physically shopping the club works out to roughly negative 0.1. That subtraction is ours, performed on Walmart’s disclosed figures. The first quarter produced the same result. The fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 was roughly positive 0.2, and the third quarter of fiscal 2026 roughly positive 0.5.

A Scan and Go basket bypasses the checkout lane. A club-fulfilled delivery order bypasses the club floor entirely. Both count in the same comp, and neither involves a member walking past a pallet display.

Sam’s Raised the Price of Admission and Reported Membership Fee Revenue Growth of 6 Percent

On April 1, Sam’s Club announced a $10 increase to annual membership fees effective May 1, 2026, taking Club membership from $50 to $60 and Plus from $110 to $120, with the Plus Sam’s Cash rewards cap rising from $500 to $750. CNBC reported it as the first increase since October 2022. The entry tier moved 20 percent.

Walmart’s first quarter comp period ended May 1, so the second quarter is the first to carry the new pricing. Membership fee revenue grew 6.1 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, 5.6 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, and 6 percent in the second. The quarter carrying a 20 percent entry-tier increase came in below the quarter two before it.

The reason is mechanical. The new rate applies at renewal, so it enters revenue gradually as members come up for billing across the year. Walmart attributes second quarter growth to increased member counts and Plus penetration, not to pricing. Nearly the entire pricing benefit sits ahead of Sam’s rather than in this quarter’s number.

The sequence is still worth stating. Sam’s charged more to get in, and trip frequency accelerated in the quarter that took effect. Whether one caused the other is not established anywhere in the disclosures.

The New Member Is Younger and Entering at the Premium Tier

Walmart discloses that Gen Z and millennials drove more than half of new member sign-ups in the second quarter, with Plus mix exceeding 50 percent within that cohort. The first quarter summary put those cohorts at roughly half of new members, so this is a pattern rather than a single reading.

Plus carries free delivery from club and free shipping on qualifying orders. A member who joins at the premium tier for the delivery benefit has bought a subscription to a fulfillment service with a warehouse attached.

Category detail is consistent with a more frequent, lower-value trip. Walmart reports fresh, freezer and cooler up mid single digits, grocery and beverage up mid single digits, and consumables up mid single digits. Home and apparel grew mid single digits. Technology, office and entertainment grew low double digits. Health and wellness comped down low single digits. Member’s Mark grew mid single digits, broadly in line with the club’s overall comp.

Curation Is Moving the Same Direction as the Trip

Latriece Watkins became president and chief executive officer of Sam’s Club U.S. in February 2026, having previously served as chief merchandising officer for Walmart U.S. Fortune reported in May that her approach centers on sharper curation and fewer choices, describing her questioning the number of fruit cup varieties stocked in a single club.

For a supplier, item count reduction and falling spend per trip arrive as the same problem from two directions. A club deliberately narrowing assortment while members shift toward more frequent, more digital purchases is a club where each item justifies its slot on velocity.

None of this is happening in a shrinking business. At Walmart’s 2025 Investment Community Meeting, Sam’s Club laid out plans to double membership and more than double sales and profit over eight to ten years, to open 30 new locations with a pipeline of roughly 15 clubs per year, and to remodel all of its existing clubs. Sam’s opened its newest club in Lebanon, Tennessee during the second quarter.

What Suppliers Should Do With This

The disclosures support three moves and rule out a fourth.

Reweight in-club activation against digital placement. Demos, roadshows, and pallet presentation reach the member who walks the club, and the club-originated portion of the comp has gone from roughly positive 0.5 to roughly negative 0.1 across the last four quarters while eCommerce climbed to roughly a fifth of net sales excluding fuel. In-club activation still works on the members it reaches. It reaches a smaller share of the volume than it did.

Treat findability on samsclub.com and in the app as a merchandising problem. A member who never walks the aisle discovers an item through search, a saved list, or a reorder prompt. Content, imagery, and title accuracy do work that a pallet used to do.

Prepare for item count conversations. Between a stated curation posture and four quarters of negative ticket, the terms Sam’s is working in are velocity per slot, incrementality, and delivery-channel performance.

What the disclosures do not support is a conclusion about pack size. Spend per trip is falling in dollars, Walmart reports total unit volumes rising, units per trip are not disclosed, and part of the dollar decline is deflation and price investment. A supplier who reads four quarters of negative ticket as a mandate to shrink case packs is acting on a number that has not been published. The better move is to ask a Sam’s merchant what is happening to units per trip in the specific category, because that answer exists inside the club and does not exist in the release.

What to Watch in the Third Quarter

Sam’s reported operating income of $678 million, up 44.3 percent, or $485 million and up 54.5 percent excluding fuel, with adjusted operating income up 23.3 percent. Walmart attributes the gain partly to tariff refund benefits, so the underlying figure is materially smaller. Gross profit rate rose 45 basis points, or 85 excluding fuel, reflecting those refunds and partly offset by price investments and by distribution and fulfillment costs tied to delivery growth.

Inventory rose 8.0 percent, against 14.9 percent in the first quarter and 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Walmart attributes the recent increases largely to higher fuel costs and volumes including fuel upstreaming with a strategic partner.

The combination to watch is delivery growth carrying real fulfillment cost while refunds flatter the margin line, in a third quarter that will not have the refund in it. The membership pricing benefit will be further along by then. And the ticket line will show whether four quarters of decline has found a floor.

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