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Additional Information
Market: NYSE
Sector: Retailers
EPIC: WMT
Latest Price: 63.73  (1.09% Ascending)
52-week High: 63.95
52-week Low: 48.41
Market Cap: 216,725.00M
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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc
walmartstores.com

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week at more than 8,000 retail units under 55 different banners in 15 countries.

 

Full Wal-Mart Stores, Inc profile here
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Wal-Mart posts lower Q4 earnings

21st Feb 2012, 8:09 am by Joyanta Acharjee
Wal-Mart posts lower Q4 earnings

Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT) Tuesday reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit that trailed analyst estimates as an emphasis on low prices hurt margins.

Net income for the quarter ended January 31 fell 15 percent to $5.16 billion, or $1.50 per share, from $6.06 billion, or $1.70, a year earlier. Excluding some items, profit was $1.44, trailing the $1.45 average estimate of 24 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Sales in the quarter rose 5.8 percent to $122.29 billion.

During the quarter, its US division posted a 1.5 percent rise in sales at stores open at least a year.

Operating margin slipped to 6.8 percent from 6.9 percent.

Walmart US, the biggest division of the world's largest retailer, has been lowering prices, bringing back a wider variety of items and focusing on a low-price message to woo shoppers on limited budgets who started to shop at dollar stores and elsewhere in recent years. Traffic at those stores rose after six quarterly declines.

Wal-Mart forecast first-quarter earnings per share from continuing operations attributable to the company of $1.01 to $1.06, compared with a profit of 98 cents per share a year earlier, which included a lift of 1 cent from multiple items.

It forecast fiscal year earnings per share from continuing operations attributable to the company of $4.72 to $4.92. In fiscal 2011 it earned $4.54 per share including 5 cents of benefits.

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