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Retail

Back to Normal: Wal-Mart Wins At Target’s Expense (WMT, TGT)

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Target_logoWalmart_logoWal-Mart Stores Inc. (NASDAQ: WMT) appears to be back to its game of 2008 and late 2007 after being a bit cautious last month.  The company beat its January expectations, and it looks like this continues to be at the expense of Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT).

Wal-Mart’s same store sales on an ex-fuel basis were +2.1% for January.  Because the company had been so cautious before, estimateswere only about +1.1% for the month.

But at Target, it looks like their shoppers are still migrating over toWal-Mart. Its same store sales fell by -3.3%.  The good news is thatestimates were for a drop of close to 5%.  The company saidfourth quarter results will be slightly under the $0.86 EPS views.

Wal-Mart shares are up almost 2% at $47.35 and Target shares are down by less than 1% at $31.25 in pre-market trading.

Everything keeps pointing to Wal-Mart’s favor for the near-term.  It is not just at Target’s expense.  Costco warned yesterday.  Most retail sales are way off at other chains as well.   

This is the trade down economy in full force.  Itmay stay that way for quite some time.  Our country’s unemployment is expected tobe about 7.5% when figures are reported tomorrow. There are about 4.8 million people on the unemployment rolls.  And the Obama administration has said that millions more of jobsmay be lost.

Jon C. Ogg
February 5, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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