Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, August 27, 2021

Article Excerpt

WALMART INC., $146.46, New York symbol WMT, is a buy. The company is the world’s biggest retailer, with 10,524 outlets in 24 countries. With the April 2021 payment, Walmart raised your dividend by 1.85%. Investors now receive $0.55 a share instead of $0.54. The new annual rate of $2.20 yields a solid 1.5%. So far, the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 has had little impact on Walmart’s customer traffic. Volumes at the company’s online operations also continue to rise. In the fiscal 2022 second quarter, ended July 31, 2021, sales rose 2.4%, to $141.05 billion from $137.42 billion a year earlier. That beat the consensus forecast of $132.0 billion. Walmart’s U.S. same-store sales (including online) rose 5.2%. The number of transactions rose 6.1% in the quarter; however, spending per visit slipped 0.8%. U.S. online sales improved 6%. The company recently sold its operations in the U.K. and Japan. Due to losses on those sales, earnings in the quarter fell 34.0%, to $4.28 billion from…