I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to deliver annual returns in the 10% range once you reach a certain size. In the case of Wal-Mart, it is almost incomprehensible how huge this company is. In terms of revenue, it generates about $487 billion per year. They sell about $1.3 billion worth of goods every single day. It wouldn’t surprise me if, within the next fifteen years, Wal-Mart comes closing to moving $1 trillion worth of merchandise in a given year. In terms of profits, Wal-Mart makes about $16 billion in a year. That’s a little bit less than in 2012 when Wal-Mart made just shy of $17 billion per year.
It doesn’t get a lot of attention these days, because its yield is 2.31%, its natural earnings per share growth rate has been somewhat low in the past few years, and the P/E ratio in the 17-18x … Read the rest of this article!