Wal-mart (WMT) Tops Q4 EPS by 1c; Issues Light Q1, FY15 Profit Outlook
"Our company grew net sales this year to reach more than $473 billion. Global eCommerce sales, including acquisitions, surpassed the $10 billion mark, a 30 percent increase over last year," said Doug McMillon, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. president and chief executive officer. "We will continue to grow our global business by focusing on customers and serving them how they want to be served."
McMillon also discussed the company's priorities.
"Comp sales improvement is a key priority, and we'll focus on being even stronger item and category merchants, delivering value and improving our service levels," McMillon said. "We'll remain focused on our expense structure, and innovate to improve productivity and aid our ability to deliver every day low prices. Our EDLP approach earns trust with customers and helps us keep our cost structure low.
"We'll invest aggressively in e-commerce and increase our small store rollout in the U.S., as we've done in several other countries, to deliver value and convenience. Today, we are announcing an increased capital allocation, above our previous forecast, to accelerate small store growth in the U.S.," McMillon added. "The combination of supercenters and smaller formats closer to customers' homes, along with e-commerce and mobile commerce, will enable us to increase our relevance for the Walmart brand around the world."
Wal-Mart Stores sees FY2015 EPS of $5.10-$5.45, versus the consensus of $5.54.
Wal-Mart Stores sees Q1 2015 EPS of $1.10-$1.20, versus the consensus of $1.23.
Wal-Mart also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.48 per share, or $1.92 annualized. This is a 2.1% increase from the prior dividend of $0.47. The dividend will be payable on April 1, 2014, to stockholders of record on March 11, 2014, with an ex-dividend date of March 7, 2014. The annual yield on the dividend is 2.6 percent.
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