Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) wants to sell you everything it possibly can. Need funeral arrangements? The world's largest retailer wants to help. $4 prescription drugs? It has you covered. In fact, it's hard to think of any product category that Wal-Mart does not seem at least a little covered with. For good reason, too: Wal-Mart has tapped out much of the short-term growth by virtue of it being almost everywhere in the U.S. and selling everything you can possibly think of.The problem is that its share price is a paperweight. It really hasn't moved in any meaningful way in years, although it flirts around the $50 mark quite regularly. WMT is dead money precisely because it can't generate the larger percentage revenue growth patterns any good $400 billion retailer should be able to. A 1% growth in sales for a company that size is $4 billion per year. Sounds impressive! But, apparently the market thinks not.
So, is Wal-Mart's growth now just a matter of maintenance rather than strategy? In terms of international sales, definitely not. Wal-Mart is trying to make up for a saturated U.S. market by entering (conquering) foreign markets, but that takes time -- plenty of time -- to do correctly. Can Wal-Mart really use price wars across a varied range of industries to try and take the market share it doesn't already own?
Expect just that this holiday season. Brad Flickinger of Strategic Resources Group says the retailer's latest strategy "will be the catalyst to wipe out a second round of national and regional retailers. In other words, Wal-Mart's corner offices are under siege from institutional investors to get the stock price up, which almost seems impossible in the short term. Just how does one get excited about the world's largest retailer's plans for future growth? Wal-Mart's executive team has a long road ahead, even if they are kings of the hill for now.
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