Wal-Mart Posts 1st Profit Fall in Decade

[waiting hawk]

All my pants are from Wal-Mart. Is that sick to save 3k a month and wear $10 Wal-Mart pants? But I have a couple from Costco now so I am a trader and helped in Wal-Mart negative earnings 🙁

biz.yahoo.com/ap/060815/earns_wal_mart

Maybe they need to start selling “granite” countertops 🙂

[barnaby33]

Don’t get your knickers in a bind just yet. Wal-mart’s negative earnings stem mostly from a 1 billion dollar write-off to get out of Germany.

Josh

[powayseller]

waiting hawk, you’ve gotta loosen up. Meet me at Fashion Valley sometime, and I will show you how to shop!

[JES]

And Wal-Mart sales were actually up…

[barnaby33]

I hate it when I catch myself being lazy. The write off stems from a 1 billion dollar charge to stop doing business in Germany and close its stores. Getting out of Germany usually isn’t that expensive.

Josh

[powayseller]

I read in the paper today that Walmart’s president blamed lower sales on higher gas prices.

In the paper also: Home Depot’s earnings were up 5%, and the company said they would return to reporting same-store sales. The story did NOT mention revenue increases, so I am concluding that the earnings increase was due to some accounting gimmick or land sales, but it is NOT related to increasing sales, that’s for sure.

Also, did everyone catch Barry Ritholtz’s analysis of what is hidden in the lower PPI? PPI dropped because of heavy discounting by the auto makers. It made up for the 40% rise in material input costs. 40% rise in quarterly material input costs! Is that inflationary or what?

This just goes to show: you can’t let yourself be fooled by a headline. Always dig inside the story. Whether it’s median, CPI, PPI, earnings increases: the number often hides an opposite reality.

[Author]

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