Wal-Mart Tries to Find Its Customer For all its success in the United States--and there is

Wal-Mart Tries to Find Its Customer

For all its success in the United States--and there is plenty of it--Wal-Mart Stores is still struggling to figure out its performance at home, where sales growth at individual stores has dropped, its customers routinely flirt with rivals like Target for clothing and its advertising has often failed to inspire.

The retailer's plans to fix the problems became clearer yesterday, when Wal-Mart executives pledged to remodel (装饰) nearly half of its United States stores over the next 18 months, beef up its marketing division and expand a bold line of clothing across much of the chain.

The changes, explained in Wal-Mart's fourth-quarter earnings announcement yesterday, threw a spotlight on the increasingly important role of one man: Eduardo Castro-Wright, the new chief of Wal-Mart's United States stores. Mr. Castro-Wright is a popular figure in the company because of his success in transforming the retailer's Mexican division into one of its most profitable units.

Mr. Castro-Wright, 51, has proved to be an aggressive innovator, overseeing a change in regional store management that will put more supervisors in the field rather than in the company's hometown of Bentonville, Ark., and encouraging experimentation, like a new pharmacy station that brings customers closer to pharmacists.

"Clearly, Wal-Mart's fortunes over the next 12 to 18 months counts on the quality of the job that Eduardo Castro-Wright does," said Robert F. Buchanan, a retail analyst at A. G. Edwards ＆ Sons. "He is the man on the hot seat."

Bill Dreher, a retail analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, called Mr. Castro-Wright a rising star and a very strong candidate to succeed the chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., providing that he can fix what analysts say is broken in the United States--namely a shopping experience that Wal-Mart executives concede has become inconsistent and, at times, unpleasant because of cluttered aisles and outdated decoration.

Sales at Wal-Mart stores open for at least a year grew, on average, 3.6 percent a month in fiscal(财政的)year 2005, compared with a 5.8 percent gain for Target, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group.

And as yesterday's earnings--or perhaps more accurately, investors' reactions--showed, managing Wal-Mart is no simple task. Profit rose 13 percent in the quarter, but Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, predicted that full-year earnings would fall below Wall Street's expectations.

As a result, Wal-Mart's shares fell as much as 1.5 percent in morning trading. Shares closed down 36 cents, or less than 1 percent, at ＄45.74.

Wal-Mart said it was optimistic about 2006 despite' the financial burdens--among them higher energy prices--facing its predominantly working-class shoppers.

The company forecast full-year earnings yesterday of ＄2.88 to ＄2.95 a share, compared with analysts' estimates of ＄2.98. Wal-Mart pointed out that the Wall Street estimates did not reflect higher interest costs and share repurchases.

Mr. Scott said the retailer finished strong in its fourth quarter, which ended Jan. 31. Net income rose to ＄3.6 billion, or 86 cents a share, for the quarter, from ＄3.2 billion, or 75 cents a share, a year ago. Sales increased 8.6 percent, to ＄89 billion from ＄82 billion, but overall revenue of ＄90.1 billion was below analysts' estimates.

In a conference call this morning, Mr. Castro-Wright outlined his plan to improve the uneven shopping experience at Wal-Mart's American stores, which accounted for 67 percent of the company's ＄312 billion in annual sales last year.

Perhaps the most ambitious part of the plan is the proposed renovation of 1,800 stores over the next 18 months. The remodeling is intended to bring the chain's oldest outlets in line wi

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