LITTLE ROCK — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had a strong back-to-school, backto-college shopping season and is positioned well heading toward Christmas, the biggest shopping event of the year, Bill Simon, president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart U.S., told investors Wednesday.
“We did everything we told you we would do two years ago and it’s working,” Simon said. He spoke at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference. His remarks werecarried live via webcast.
Simon noted that, for the first half of the company’s fiscal year, sales at stores open at least a year were up 2.4 percent, or roughly $150 million per week. Same-store sales, a key measure of success in retailing, exclude the impact of stores opened or closed during the period.
In August, Wal-Mart reported same-store sales up 2.2 percent for the second quarter of its fiscal year, its fourth consecutive quarterly gain following a string of nine straight quarters of decline.
Store traffic was up by 133,000 customers per day during the first half of the year, Simon said.
The company, he said, must continue to have the broadestassortment of products at the lowest prices because that’s what shoppers expect. Even the once-struggling apparel business recorded its second consecutive increase in samestore sales as the retailer focused on fashion basics.
“Our apparel business remains stong,” he said.
Patty Edwards, retail ana-lyst with Trutina Financial in Bellevue, Wash., said Wal-Mart’s women’s apparel offering has been “appealing enough without going much beyond basics.”
“The selection that has been available is on point,” she said. “It has been basics, but it has enough of an element of fashion about it.”
Edwards said she has been surprised by some products she’s found on Wal-Mart’s shelves, such as chocolate and coconut marshmallows.
Offering value is key, she said, because “we know thatthe consumer continues to be very price-sensitive.”
As the Christmas shopping season approaches, Wal-Mart has re-launched its layaway program, giving shoppers up to 12 weeks to make payments and offering a refund of the $5 layaway entry fee once items are paid off. That fee was lowered from $15 this week.
“We’re not about collecting fees,” Simon said.
This year’s layaway program runs Sept. 16 through Dec. 14, giving shoppers an extra 30 days to select and pay for merchandise. A down payment of 10 percent or $10, whichever is greater, is required.
The company’s supercenters remain the “main engine” of the company, he said, but smaller formats including the Neighborhood Market stores, a supermarket format, and the smaller Wal-Mart Express stores, will increase in number as the company grows in urban markets including Miami, Denver and Los Angeles.
He noted that nonfood general merchandise makes up as much as 20 percent of sales in some Neighborhood Market stores.
“It’s not just a grocery store, it’s a very versatile format,” Simon said.
Pharmacies in those stores are “particularly robust,” he said.
Wal-Mart’s stock closed Wednesday at $73.55 a share, up 4 cents, on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has traded between $49.94 and $75.24 in the past year.
Business, Pages 21 on 09/06/2012