LITTLE ROCK — Sales, traffic better, Wal-Mart exec says
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
has turned the corner on declining sales and store traffic, despite rising gasoline prices and high unemployment that has many of its customers financially stressed, a top executive officer told investors Wednesday.
“I think we have a very good story to tell,” Duncan Mac Naughton, executive vice president, chief merchandising and marketing officer for Wal-Mart U.S., said at an investor conference in Toronto.
“The U.S. model is working,” he said.
Mac Naughton, a former chief merchandising officer for Wal-Mart Canada, spoke at the CIBC World Markets Retail and Consumer Conference.
His presentation was webcast live.
For Wal-Mart’s fourth quarter, which ended in January, the company reported diluted earnings per share of $1.51, above the company’s guidance of $1.42 to $1.48 per share and year-ago earnings of $1.41.
Sales at stores open at least a year, known as same-store sales, rose 1.5 percent. The increase came after two years of declining same-store sales, which are a key measure of success in retailing.
Money manager set to trim stake in BHP
BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, said it’s trimming holdings in BHP Billiton Ltd. after concerns the company’s shale gas assets and a mine in Australia may curb returns.
BHP, the world’s biggest mining company, bought Chesapeake Energy’s north-central Arkansas Fayetteville Shale assets a year ago for $4.75 billion and bought Petrohawk Energy Corp. for about $12.1 billion in cash.
BHP hasn’t decided whether to expand the uranium-copper-gold mine at a cost Deutsche Bank AG estimated in October at $27.4 billion.
“They need to clearly indicate to the market what their strategy [on the mine] is, around shale gas is, all of these things,” said Catherine Raw, a fund manager at BlackRock.
BlackRock is the largest shareholder of BHP’s Australian stock, with 5.7 percent, according to data Bloomberg News compiled.
State index falls 2.16 on 10 stocks’ losses
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, fell 2.16 to 234.34 on Wednesday.
Nine stocks dropped and seven rose.
P.A.M. Transportation Services rose 1.1 percent in heavy trading.
America’s Car-Mart fell 2.3 percent on average volume.
Volume was 22.2 million shares, compared with average daily volume of 23.3 million shares.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business, Pages 21 on 03/29/2012