No Turn On Red

Wal-Mart held their annual meeting yesterday, holding back no punches with the entertainment:

Mixing business and pleasure, the four-hour event featured performances from such celebrities as Jennifer Lopez, American Idol winner Jordin Sparks and comedian Sinbad.

Sorry - I just find that as a odd mix of entertainment for the meeting.

Margaret Brennan has posted a good blog at the CNBC site with her thoughts from the meeting. Good rundown of some of the information that is interesting, but may have been overlooked by some of the bigger announcements.

This piece struck me as interesting:

After J. Lo finished performing, Lee Scott, Eduardo Castro-Wright and other executives stuck around to do their first press briefing ever. Clearly, Wal-Mart is starting to recognize that shutting out the press doesn’t help us tell their story more accurately. (Scott did say that he didn’t see any friendly faces in the crowd though, making clear he isn’t happy with press coverage or the media’s presence.)

Wal-Mart is very private within the media. As they try to turn things around, they need to realize that they need to be more accessable, put on a more human face, and be more transparent.

You can read more at her blog. More coverage of the event from the Star Telegram.

Related posts

• Wal-Mart’s Urban Tale (0)
• Wal-Mart using Facebook to target young consumers (0)
• Wal-Mart to face worker-led class-action lawsuit in New Jersey (0)
• Wal-Mart to expand walk-in health clinics (1)
• Wal-Mart to cut back on expansion (2)

This week I got to spend two days in Wisconsin attending the Kohl’s Shareholder Meeting. The company sends one represenative from every store to the meeting. It is a very fun, informative and interesting two days in the Midwest. In years past, anyone I’ve known who has gone to it has said that they’ve come back re-energized and excited. That describes how I am feeling very well. I give the company a lot of credit for the logistical nightmare that they put themselves through in order to make sure that every store is represented, but they pulled it off flawlessly and allowed us all to have a really great time.

I’m not going to discuss any of the real details of the meeting here, however the Milwaukee Business Journal has a good recap of the public portion of the event.

On expansion:

Kohl’s also set its 2006 expansion plans at 85 new stores, primarily in the Midwest and Southeast, and said it will build a distribution center in California in support of its western expansion. The company had previously said it would add 80 to 85 stores this year. In all, the company hopes to grow its total number of stores to 1,200 by 2010, accompanied by net income growth of 15 percent to 20 percent.

On Jersey City:

A quarter of the new stores will be smaller than the traditional Kohl’s store, Meier said. One store will be a two-story, 133,000-square-foot facility in a converted Macy’s in Jersey City, N.J., a style that better fits in urban areas, she said. The traditional Kohl’s store is about 86,000 square feet. The smaller stores are about 68,000 square feet.

(According to this article, original from the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City store may in fact be a little larger than that - clocking in a 159,642 square feet.)

And finally, on last year’s fiscal performance:

The company reported that net income for the 12 months ended Jan. 28, 2006, increased 19.7 percent to $842 million, or $2.43 per share, compared with $703.4 million, or $2.04 per share, a year ago. Net income has increased at a compounded annual growth rate of 19.7 percent, the company said. Net sales increased 14.5 percent to $13.4 billion compared with $11.7 billion a year ago. Comparable store sales — sales at stores open during both years — increased 3.4 percent for the year.

Good times. The rest of the article is here. More information via Reuters and Kohl’s press release.

Related posts

• Retailers See Mixed Results in June (0)
• Retail roundup - Q2 results, Kohl’s (0)
• July Retail Sales Disappoint Everyone (0)
• Jim Cramer on Kohl’s and JCPenney (0)
• Department stores show strongest showing in July (1)