Retail

Wal-Mart Gets 4 Upgrades (WMT)

In our Friday article noting that the ‘less bad is good’ for Wal-Mart (WMT-NYSE), we noted that the
way the news was presented and the initiatives that were being continued were the sort that would probably create multiple upgrades from Wall Street research shops.

That appears to be what is going on this morning.  This morning there are already four key upgrades from major Wall Street firms.  Wal-Mart shares have seen the following upgrades this morning: raised from neutral to "Overweight" at HSBC ($61 target) , raised from market perform to ‘outperform" at Wachovia, raised at J.P.Morgan from neutral to an "Overweight" rating, and raised at Morgan Stanley from equal-weight to "Overweight."

Shares of WMT are indicated up over 1% in pre-market activity.  If it wasn’t for the huge drop in China and perhaps the news of a foiled terror plot at JFK Airport this might be indicated higher.  After the company released all of its positive data at the shareholder meeting Friday, shares closed up almost 4% ahead of today’s upgrades.

Jon C. Ogg
June 4, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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