Wal Mart

Is Wal Mart about to blow up? Or is it on the way down? I’d like to take a look at some of the pros and cons of investing in this company with you all and see how the future looks. My name is Dave and I’d like to inform everyone who has invested in Wal Mart or who will be investing to watch this Company closely in the future.

As you can see, Wal Mart’s stock over the past 12 months has climbed less than 6%. It has been pretty flat. However, this doesn’t always mean there are no benefits, and it doesn’t determine the future either.

With Wal Mart you know what you are getting. It is clearly a stable company. They have been around for over 50 years and are the largest retailer in the world in sales. It’s earnings per share, profits and revenues have all increased for the last 20 years, and it’s earnings have grown at almost 10% in the last 5 years. Wal Mart is also good at Returning Capital. Over the last 5 years 68 billion of cash flow from operations has been reinvested, it has paid out 23 billion in dividends and bought back 39 billion in shares. These benefits will most likely continue as they have 9 billion in cash and short term investsments and recorded 26 billion in operating cash flow for 2012. New Technologies have also helped them stay on the top. The Scan and Go app for the Apple I-phone was introduced to keep stores efficient. They have also invested a lot in ecommerce to fight rivals like Amazon and Ebay.

Some of the negatives to consider with Wal Mart begins with the fact that it is a Retail business. Which means that if the consumers aren’t spending then sales will drop. Which has been the case for the last two quarters. Gas prices, weather, and anything that affects consumers could have potential to affect sales. There also has always been a lot of Controversy with Wal Mart. People love to hate Wal Mart for many reasons from importing goods to the low wages of their employees. Still though they have always seemed to thrive...