It’s pile-on-Walmart time

With rising expectations that Walmart’s sales for the recently ended second quarter will be weak when it reports on August 15, the company once again has naysayers doubting its growth prospects with some questioning its long-term viability.

As we noted last week in a piece titled, “Wealth effect not it play at Walmart,”and as other analysts have suggested, Walmart’s same store sales are likely to be negative or at the low end of the company’s forecast range of flat to up 2%. Certainly not a great showing, but a far cry from some of the doomsday scenarios put forth by those who see Walmart at the front edge of a long-term term decline. For example, in a piece on Yahoo! Finance a pair of retail pundits weighed in on the topic, “3 signs Walmart’s best days are behind it.”

Ever the target of criticism, deservedly so in some cases, any hint of weakness on the part of Walmart tends to bring out the naysayers. If second quarter sales are soft, Walmart will be in for a lot of second guessing and questions about its business model.