Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has been mentioned in two articles over the past few days on SECInvestor.com, and for good reason - as the world's largest retailer with a $200 billion market capitalization and $350 billion in annual sales Wal-Mart has innumerable impacts on other companies and the U.S. economy as a whole. Today, it reported results that bode well for its future and the U.S. economy but not so well for its competitors, as Wal-Mart beat analyst predictions about its fourth-quarter earnings.

For the quarter ending January 31st, the company saw earnings grow 5.1% to $4.1 billion from $3.9 billion for the same quarter last year. The results were largely due to an 8% increase in sales to a staggering $106.3 billion - a record quarter for the company and the first time it cracked the $100 billion mark in quarterly sales. Interestingly, these results came even though consumer confidence in the economy continues to erode.

"Clearly our underlying operational performance exceeded the expectations we had at the beginning of the quarter,'' Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott said, admitting that to maintain it the economy will "be a critical factor."

Wal-Mart has been able to drive sales and foot-traffic from its expanding grocery and electronics businesses. Though the grocery business is notoriously low-margin, Wal-Mart is in the unique position to be able to attract customers with its expanded food offerings but monetize the traffic with its other product offerings.

Despite these promising results, when a company is nearing $400 billion in annual sales how much sales or profit growth is realistic moving forward? Wal-Mart management is in the unique position of having tremendous brand-recognition and traffic advantages, but they are also in the unenviable position of trying to further leverage those advantages to grow already huge results - with shares up only about 1% the market sentiment seems mixed on the future.

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