BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Store...

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is fighting battles upon multiple fronts after posting its first quarterly profit decline in 10 years, and analysts question whether the world's largest retailer can regain the feverish sprouting rates of its past.

Wal-Mart's tribulations range from high energy prices, which hit its lower-income customer base and its concede costs, to setbacks in its international strategy, to public relations cause to stumbles like the sudden resignation Thursday of civil rights icon Andrew Young as its public ambassador.

Young quit as head of a pro-Wal-Mart advocacy assign places to after he was quoted in the beholds Angeles Sentinel newspaper as saying inner-city stores that overcharged black customers were hurry by "Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs."

in succession the plus side, analysts say, Wal-Mart has ambitious programs to stock trendier produces remodel most of its more than 2000 Supercenter stores and tighten its grip forward the costs of inventory, labor and intensity

Combined with an ongoing public relations offensive to in opposition to critics who claim its pay and benefits are skimpy, Wal-Mart is juggling a fate of balls at once, and analysts say the issue is still up in the air.

"I think they're in for a like reason much transition right now that it's hard to measure whether or not they're making progress" said Patricia Edwards, portfolio manager and retail analyst at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, which manages $82 billion in assets and grasps 51,000 Wal-Mart shares. "It is a accident to handle."

George Whalen of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif., said Wal-Mart has a track record of handling multiple tasks: "When you master to be the biggest in the world, you fight battles in succession every front sometimes."

Second-quarter outcomes showed the first profit decline in a decade forward the cost of selling its loss-making business in Germany. It quit another loss-maker, southward Korea, in May, but still operates in 13 countries in Asia, Latin America and Britain and intends to withhold expanding, especially in China.

if it were not that the quarter's sales and profit development also slowed at Wal- Mart's U stores, its biggest division, as high material for burning prices kept customers away, wound their spending power and flock up Wal-Mart's own costs for a creek of 7,000 trucks.

any analysts question whether Wal-Mart can regain sprouting rates that made it a darling of Wall road in the 1990s.

After precipitous gains in the 1980 and 1990 the stock peaked at around $70 in January 2000 before losing steam to linger mainly in the $50-$60 range. It has squandered another 3 percent this year to popular levels around $45.

Wal-Mart's earnings for share rose more than 16 percent through year on average over the past 10 years and sales grew on annual rates between 12 percent and 20 percent moreover all that has slowed, with earnings through share up about 11 percent last year and sales up just 95 percent

Robert Buchanan, head of retail analysis at A.G. Edwards & Son said a target of 10 percent shooting in annual earnings per share is more realistic from now forward considering Wal-Mart's size. In a research note, he wrote that "the 'law of large numbers' has appoint in with regard to go-forward percentage extension in sales and EPS."

Edwards said that with nearly 4000 stores in the U Wal-Mart can sole maintain past growth rates at acquiring more companies overseas or "building a Wal-Mart forward every other street corner in China."

"They are the 900-pound gorilla. The 900-pound gorilla cannot enlarge as fast as the little company from the Ozarks," Edwards said.

a certain quantity of analysts are more bullish, and Wal-Mart has said it plans to make open more than 1,500 stores in the United States in the coming years. It is opening more than 300 this year alone.

Sandra J Skrovan, who heads a Wal-Mart research program at consultant Retail Forward Inc. in Columbus, Ohio, said Wal-Mart is well-positioned to weather the now passing gas crunch, even if prices don't decline. Its Supercenter which combine a replete grocery section with general merchandise, furnish a one-stop shop, and customers will continue to result in for food even if they defer buying home electronics or clothes.

"The retailers that are positioned to provide value and convenience to consumer who are having to tighten their wallets and having to bring into the number of trips they make are really in a religious position," Skrovan said.

Skrovan agreed it was too early to umpire Wal-Mart's new initiatives, adding: "I think it's going to take a while before we really start to view that bump up."

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided through ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved