Introduction to the fiscal 2006 Wal-Mart financial statements

I have finally taken the time to read and digest Wal-Mart’s 2006 Annual Report as well as its 2006 10-K filing. The next series of posts on this blog will be simply be observations I made while reading these documents in detail. Please note that these observations will almost assuredly be considered incredibly boring by casual Wal-Mart observers. … If I were to review this blog as an outsider, I would probably say something along the lines of the following: “Mainly a highly technical look at Wal-Mart’s financial statements with some material on overall operations. Blog apparently run by a bookish type who probably spends way too much time poring over Wal-Mart’s filings when he should instead be outside enjoying a fine weekend.”

With that said, let’s begin now on Wal-Mart’s filings for fiscal 2006.

It is important to remember that Wal-Mart’s fiscal year ends on January 31st. This means that Wal-Mart’s fiscal 2006 = 11 months of calendar 2005 plus one month of calendar 2006. In essence, we are really looking at the numbers for calendar 2005 when we examine the annual report for 2006. (Easy, however, to become confused by the 2006 title.)