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Wal-Mart Stores announced a new $15 billion share repurchase program and said it'll increase its fiscal-year dividend by 15 percent, to $1.09 per share.
But this comes the same week that the world's largest retailer stopped reporting its same-store sales on a monthly basis.
How does the chain's stock [WMT
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John Lawrence, managing director of equity research at Morgan Keegan, offered CNBC his take.
"Our view is still on Wal-Mart," said Lawrence.
"We just believe in a lot of the things they're doing — the initiative that started a couple of years ago, that continues to be in place — improvement in some of those underperforming categories, can lead to a good second half of this year."
What of the long term?
"Looking forward, some of the investments they're making in technology -- as those costs go away, you can leverage those. Some real opportunity for earnings gains over the next couple of years."
Lawrence maintains his "Outperform" rating on Wal-Mart.
Watch the full interview for more of Lawrence's stock insights.
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Discount Retail Stocks Now:
Target [TGT
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Costco [COST
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BJ's Wholesale Club [BJ
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Amazon.com [AMZN
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Disclosures:
Disclosure information was not available for Lawrence or his company.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes