Wal-Mart: One retail stock you can feel good about owning

Filed under: Earnings reports, Wal-Mart (WMT), Stocks to Buy

On a day when stocks were down more than 3%, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) moved to the upside yesterday by more than 4%. The reason for the big gain was the company's fourth-quarter operating performance.

The company reported that it had earned $1.03 per share, excluding items. This compares favorably to analyst expectations of 99 cents per share. In the year prior, WMT made $1.02 per share.

The company said it is seeing customer traffic increase as it draws sales away from competitors. The intense focus on price savings is paying dividends during this economic slowdown.

WMT said earnings were hurt by a strong U.S. dollar that weakened the impact of overseas sales. Looking forward, WMT expects the global slowdown to negatively impact performance and that a strong dollar would hurt earnings over the next few quarters.

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Wal-Mart: One retail stock you can feel good about owning originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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