A Formula for Success
When Walmart shareholders gather each year in early June for the company’s annual meeting the elephant in the auditorium for the past decade has been the company’s share price. Ranging between $45 and $55 for most of the past 10 years, with the occasional spike above $60 in early 2002 and again in the fall of 2008, shareholders had to be content with steady dividend increases.
That’s the scenario again this year, with a share price hovering around $50, and a recent dividend increase that has put the annual per share payout at a healthy $1.21. Walmart executives can’t control the company’s stock price, as they have noted at past annual meetings when the question arose about when it would go up. However, they do control the performance of the business, and since last fall the watch words on that front have been growth, leverage and returns. While those concepts are familiar goals of every business, in Walmart’s case they describe the objectives behind a broad slate of initiatives currently being executed to achieve shareholder satisfaction. The company’s stock price may not have budged this year, but executives contend they are delivering against stated objectives and point to first quarter results as evidence.
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