Wal-Mart projected growth in global retail square footage for 2006

In late October of 2005, Wal-Mart announced its square footage growth plans for calendar 2006.

"Globally, the company expects to add over 60 million square feet of gross retail space, which is over an 8% increase from the estimated current fiscal year-end square footage."

Net additions
Supercenters:    275
Discount stores:    -135
Neighborhood Markets:    17
Sam’s Clubs:    15

(The above numbers are the median of store range numbers released by Wal-Mart. Also they are net of relocations.)

Using a calculator and the above store numbers, domestically they will add approximately 40,100,000 square feet ... a 7.0% increase in domestic retail space from last year.

This leaves about 19,900,000 square feet they will need to add abroad.

Joe Hatfield over in China recently announced they were going to open 20 new stores there this year. At about 183,000 square feet per store that comes to 3,665,000 new square feet in China.

This leaves at least 16,200,000 million square feet that will be added mainly in Mexico, Canada, Brazil and the UK.

To sum up, this means retail square footage growth rates approximately as follows for this year:

United States:      7.0%
International:    12.7%


(For the numbers released by Wal-Mart, click here.)