Investopedia: Wal-Mart Uses Rigorous Cost Control To Offset Weaker Sales

It's no secret that a meaningful percentage of the country's retail business goes on under the roof of Wal-Mart's (NYSE:WMT) stores. To that end, when consumers are feeling pressure (particularly those on the less affluent side of the ledger) it shows up in Wal-Mart's numbers. This gigantic retailer didn't have a bad fiscal first quarter, and it sounds like the fiscal year ahead should get better, but once again Wal-Mart is having to turn to operating synergies to wring out some growth. This stock's status as a proxy for the U.S. retailing sector makes talk of value somewhat moot, but these shares don't look notably cheap on a long-term basis.

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Investopedia: Could Best Buy's Founder Take The Company Off The Market?

Electronics retailing giant Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) badly needs stability, and that seems to be exactly what the company is not getting. The company is still looking for a new full-time CEO, preferably one with experience in turning around a retailer, and now the company's founder is stepping away from the company. Now board chair and founder Richard Schulze has elected to step away from the company entirely, instead of staying on the board for another year as had been planned.

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Investopedia: Wal-Mart Rolls On

A company as immense as Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is not going to show a great deal of turbulence from quarter to quarter, but there's nothing wrong with steady growth and stepwise execution of a solid business plan. To that end, Wal-Mart shareholders have little to worry about, as management continues to balance an overseas growth strategy with a domestic operating efficiency plan. Although Wal-Mart is not especially cheap, it likely remains a reasonably good conservative play on consumer spending in the United States, tinged with some international growth.


Basically Solid Fiscal Fourth Quarter Results
Wal-Mart didn't deliver too many surprises in its fiscal fourth quarter, and investors basically have to go to the right of the decimal points to find much deviation from expectation.


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Investopedia: Winn-Dixie Needs An Identity

Since emerging from its bankruptcy of 2005, Winn-Dixie (Nasdaq:WINN) has struggled to really work as a stock or as a food retailing concept. Not really a value-focused player like Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) or Aldi, nor a top service provider like Publix or Ruddick's (NYSE:RDK) Harris Teeter, Winn-Dixie seems to be foundering a bit as it tries to rebuild its business and its market cap. With fiscal fourth quarter earnings and 2012 guidance in hand, it is hard to see where this stock really fits.

Fourth Quarter Results as Expected  
Given the Winn-Dixie preannounced some of its fourth quarter results a little while ago, there was not a lot of drama in the numbers that the company did report. Reported sales fell almost 4%, while identical-store sales rose more than 3% despite a decline in store traffic.
 
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Investopedia: Dollar General Stuck Between Value And Growth

It is true that people will continue to buy food and other necessities of life through good times and bad, but there can be some pretty significant shifts in how and where they do that buying. When times are good and there's room in the budget, places like Whole Foods (NYSE:WFM) and Fresh Market (NYSE:TFM) can draw in the traffic. Tough times, though, lead to tough decisions and can lead shoppers to consider trading down to the likes of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and the deep discount retailers collectively known as "dollar stores." 


While that does indeed seem to be happening for Dollar General (NYSE:DG), the question is whether investors are already too far ahead of the story. Dollar General is indeed bringing people into the stores and management deserves credit for maintaining solid margins, but it looks like the valuation already presupposes a lot of that performance.

A Surprisingly Strong Second Quarter
One of the recent themes for retailers has been the push/pull between preserving margins (by raising prices) and preserving market share as input costs keep rising. Wal-Mart and Target (NYSE: TGT), for instance, have generally chosen to preserve margins and the result has been unimpressive same-store sales. Dollar General has generally been going the other way.


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Investopedia: BJ's Goes Bye-Bye

To see the announcement that BJ's Wholesale Club (NYSE:BJ) had agreed to sell itself was only slightly more surprising than Thursday following Wednesday. For starters, this warehouse retailer has been a laggard behind Wal-Mart's (NYSE:WMT) Sam's Club and Costco (Nasdaq:COST) for quite some time and laggards in attractive industries are always appealing takeout candidates. What's more, rumors, speculations, aborted offers and announced intentions have been preparing shareholders for a deal for at least a few years now.

The Deal That BJ's Got
BJ's announced that it will sell itself to private equity parties Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners in an all-cash deal worth $2.8 billion. That means $51.25 per share - only about a 7% premium to Tuesday's close, but a 38% premium to the price before LGP took a significant ownership stake and very close to the all-time high for these shares.

Even at this price, though, BJ's is not exactly bowing out with a premium valuation. At only a little more than six times trailing EBITDA, BJ's is going at a valuation close to slow-growing Wal-Mart and Target (NYSE:TGT) and well below rival Costco and a wider universe of value-oriented retailers like Family Dollar (NYSE:FDO) and Dollar General (NYSE:DG). What is interesting, too, is that on a discounted cash flow basis this price does not anticipate much in the way of dramatic improvement - if LGP and CVC can really turn this business around, they will get the vast majority of the benefit.

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FinancialEdge: 5 Big Names That Profited From The Recession

Economics is fortunately almost never a zero-sum game; there can be multiple winners and even in the worst of times there can be players who manage to benefit and grow. Such is the case for this latest recession. While Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and hundreds of small banks have disappeared from the landscape (at least as independent entities), others have seen their business or prospects actually improve. (This company survived many financial crises in its long history. Find out what finally drove it to bankruptcy. Check out Case Study: The Collapse of Lehman Brothers.)

Here is a short list of some the most notable beneficiaries of this recent recession.

The Oracles
Although there were arguably many voices talking about the housing bubble and the large systematic risks that it was creating, two names really rose out of the noise. NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini has appeared prophetic with his predictions of how the collapsing housing market would ripple through the economy. Likewise, Nassim Taleb, author of the The Black Swan, has seen his work jump into the spotlight with broad acclaim for its discussions of the flaws inherent in risk assessment and prediction.


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