Will Wal-Mart (WMT) earnings be electric?

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will be reporting results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2008 tomorrow morning before the market opens in a fashion that most likely will be list quarters past for years: a news release with some official comments but no live conference call or webcast. I hope this changes tomorrow morning, but I'm not counting on it. If it happens, stay tuned to BloggingStocks for a liveblog of the news coverage tomorrow morning bright and early. Wal-Mart hasn't given an official time for when the release will be issued, but I'd expect at about 8am EST or earlier.

Estimates for the quarter are for earnings of 77 cents and $92.75 billion in revenues, according to Thomson Financial. Wal-Mart continues to have any thunder stolen by smaller competitor Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), which regularly posts better monthly same-store sales numbers. Proof? July numbers showed a 5.9% gain for Target in same-store sales while Wal-Mart poked along at 1.9%.

One thing that I have noticed in many newer and recently remodeled Wal-Mart Supercenters recently has been how agressively the retailer has been targeting the home electronics market. This fact was noted by 24/7 Wall St. and myself many times in recent months, and the proof is now viewable across Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. Flat-panel TVs seem to be the centerpiece of Wal-Mart's electronics strategy here, and we'll see if that product segment is discussed in the retailer's Q2 results tomorrow. For now (and for the last five years), Wal-Mart shares are languishing in mediocrity, and even a stellar quarter tomorrow probably will not change that.