How These 3 Big Announcements Will Affect Walmart's Earnings

Walmart will announce its latest earnings report on May 15 before the opening bell. Belus Capital Advisors CEO Brian Sozzi believes the quarter was yet another challenging one for the world’s largest retailer. Here, Sozzi takes a look at some prior developments at the company that have virtually went forgotten, but remain vitally important to the future of the company as well as its shareholder base, including a 2012 initiative to lower prices, updating packaged foods to be more healthy by 2015, and some 300 laggard stores. However, Walmart's same-store sales were negative throughout 2013, suggesting the big box retailer isn't lowering prices enough to stave off competition from Target. Gross margin hasn't moved much either despite the new product ingredients, and there has been no update on the U.S. stores with 7% negative sales growth.