Retailer Intelligence

It’s looking like Walmart could be in for an eighth consecutive quarter of declining same-store sales, judging from the company’s first-quarter forecast, which contemplates the impact of internal and external forces on results. Official guidance calls for comps to be flat or decline 2% despite an easy comparison against the prior-year first quarter when comps declined 1.4%.

Everyone has an opinion on Walmart, especially given the subpar performance of the U.S. stores division. The search for answers makes for some interesting conversations such as the one that took place earlier this week on the financial news network CNBC. Click here to watch. 

A lack of visibility into Walmart’s sales performance coupled with concerns about the pace of a U.S. sales recovery is contributing to some apprehension on Wall Street regarding the company’s fourth-quarter performance.

New York City -- Teen retailers Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Aeropostale and American Eagle Outfitters will stop reporting monthly sales after Thursday.

Many retail executives say reporting sales from stores open at least a year puts too much focus on short-term results. 
 

A monthly pricing survey conducted by Credit Suisse in December shows that Walmart remains the lowest price on a basket of 60 products across two major markets, Target is closer than ever and is actually less expensive for those who take advantage of the 5% Rewards program.

New York City -- The National Retail Federation’s 100th Annual Convention & Expo -- The BIG Show -- at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City featured more than 500 exhibiting companies and presentations from a stellar line-up of top-tier retailers, analysts and industry consultants. This exclusive report, the 2011 NRF BIG Show Wrap-Up, from Chain Store Age, details some of the show’s highlights.

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NEW YORK — The Motley Fool on Tuesday suggested all three national pureplay drug chains were in a better position today than five years and three years ago based on a metric called the “cash king margin.”

The metric teases out the amount of free cash flow a company actually can use to monetize shareholder value by paying dividends or buying back stocks. Companies that can create cash king margins (calculated by dividing free cash flow by sales) of more than 10% are the most attractive to investors, the Fool surmised.

It seemed like everything was going Target’s way after the company reported a 5.5% same-store sales increase during November, but then the revelation came last week of a 0.9% December comp increase and the wind came out of the company’s sales.