For most investors, the hardest part of building a Motley Fool-esque long-term portfolio isn’t finding great companies. It’s having the patience to hold them through decades of market noise, recessions, valuation swings, and changing consumer behavior. The businesses that survive those cycles tend to share a few traits: scale, pricing power, recurring cash flow, and the ability to adapt without losing what made them dominant in the first place.
That’s why these two tickers continue to stand out. They operate different retail models, attract different types of shoppers, and make money in different ways, but both have quietly evolved into far more durable businesses than many investors realize.
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1.Walmart
Walmart (WMT 0.88%) is the easier of the two to underwrite over the next 20 years. The company is a Dividend King (a company with at least 50 consecutive years of dividend increases), with 53 years of consecutive dividend increases. The company extended its dividend-growth streak to 53 consecutive years in 2026, with the quarterly payout raised to $0.248 per share. The dividend itself is modest in absolute terms, but the growth rate and durability matter on a multi-decade horizon.
What has changed at Walmart over the last five years is a shift toward higher-margin businesses. Advertising revenue is now around $6.4 billion annually, Walmart Plus membership is scaling, and the marketplace business has expanded the take-rate model that historically belonged to Amazon. In the fiscal fourth quarter, adjusted operating income grew 10.8% on 5.6% revenue growth — the kind of operating leverage that compounds when sustained over years.
For fiscal 2027, Walmart is guiding to adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.75 to $2.85, which would cover the new dividend several times over.
Walmart’s market position is large enough that antitrust scrutiny is a recurring possibility, and competition from Amazon, Costco, and the discounters is constant. Neither is likely to break the dividend, but both could compress the multiple at various points.
Today’s Change
(-0.88%) $-1.07
Current Price
$120.27
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$959B
Day’s Range
$118.91 – $121.95
52wk Range
$93.43 – $135.16
Volume
30.3M
Avg Vol
19.3M
Gross Margin
23.48%
Dividend Yield
0.80%
2. Costco Wholesale
Costco Wholesale (COST 2.11%) is on a banger of a stock run. It has a different shape than Walmart but more of the same idea. The dividend yield is modest, and the company occasionally pays a large special dividend in addition to the regular payout.
The underlying business is what supports the 20-year thesis. Membership fee revenue in the first 24 weeks of fiscal 2026 reached $2.68 billion, which exceeded the operating income generated from merchandise sales over the same period by $134.2 billion in merchandise revenue. That single fact is the most important thing to understand about Costco.
The membership model converts the business into something closer to a high-renewal-rate subscription company than a traditional retailer. Renewal rates have remained above 90% in the U.S. and Canada for years, which is an extraordinary level of customer retention. Each membership fee dollar is high-margin and recurring, and the merchandise business mostly exists to make the membership worth renewing.
That being said, Costco trades at one of the highest multiples in retail, partly because of the membership profile and partly because of the unit growth runway. If membership fee growth or renewal rates ever soften, the multiple is exposed and you may see a price dip. There is also some risk from international expansion execution, particularly in Asia and Europe, where store counts are still relatively small.
Today’s Change
(-2.11%) $-22.21
Current Price
$1028.24
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$456B
Day’s Range
$1025.19 – $1045.64
52wk Range
$844.06 – $1096.50
Volume
2.1M
Avg Vol
1.9M
Gross Margin
12.93%
Dividend Yield
0.52%
Why these two companies work together
Walmart and Costco solve different customer problems. Walmart is the broad-based everyday retailer with a growing higher-margin layer (advertising, membership, marketplace) on top. Costco is a curated wholesale-style membership model with high renewal economics. Both have category leadership, both generate substantial free cash flow, both have raised dividends for years, and both have demonstrated the ability to adapt to e-commerce in ways that smaller retailers have not.
For a 20-year investor, the appeal of pairing them is diversification within consumer retail without overlapping the underlying business model. A weakness in any one channel or geography is unlikely to break both.
What 20 years’ time probably looks like for both companies
The honest answer is that nobody knows what consumer retail will look like in 2046. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that both Walmart and Costco are likely to be among the more durable companies in U.S. retail, that both have dividend policies aligned with long-term shareholder value, and that both have demonstrated the rare ability to keep growing share at their current scale.
I wouldn’t go all in with my investments right now, especially on Costco. These are the kinds of stocks that could keep climbing for the next 20 years, but Costco still looks pretty expensive to me. I’d rather stay patient, wait for a pullback, and buy on the dips.
