Recent Wal-Mart stock price weakness

It's amazing to see Wal-Mart's stock price hovering down near three year lows lately. The recent low point was $44.53 (on Sep 2nd). Mainly this is an ongoing reaction to the latest quarterly earnings which were released on August 16th.

Operating profit growth and net profit GROWTH for the quarter ending 7/31/2005 were half the rate of the year earlier quarter.

	13 weeks ending	13 weeks ending
	7/31/2005	7/31/2004
Net sales growth (yoy)	10.2%	11.3%
Operating income growth (yoy)	6.2%	16.1%
Net income growth (yoy)	5.8%	8.5%

This is especially significant because on page 12 of the most recent annual report (year ending 1/31/2005), CEO Lee Scott goes out of his way to discuss the "outstanding growth prospects" for Wal-Mart.

Also note that Mr. Scott states there is room "for almost 4,000 more Supercenters" in the U.S.
(As of 1/31/2005 there were 1,713 Supercenters. Adding 4,000 more would mean a total of 5,713 Supercenters in the United States. ..That's a lot of square footage!..)