30 years on the Big Board

Just how big is big? Really big. Consider this. Last year, Wal-Mart brought in $217.8 billion at the cash register. If each of those dollar bills — six inches long apiece — were laid end to end, they would stretch from the earth to the moon and back more than 43 times; and there would still be enough left over to circle the globe a few times.

• Last year, Wal-Mart stores here and abroad occupied 516 million square feet of retail selling space. And another 46 million square feet is being added this year, not counting any potential acquisitions by the retail giant. That means that by the end of 2002, there will be almost enough Wal-Mart stores to occupy every square inch of the island of Manhattan and its roughly 22 square miles. And that's not counting the parking lots. Add those to the mix and you could probably pave over the rest of New York.
• Wal-Mart's stock has split 11 times on a two-for-one basis since going public on Oct. 1, 1970, most recently in March 19, 1999. That means that if you had bought just one share of stock back in 1970, it would have multiplied into 2,048 shares by now. No wonder they call those early stock clerks "Wal-Mart millionaires." Wal-Mart stock, now trading at about $58 a share, has often split since the 1980s, when the stock price moved past $60 a share. But don't hold your breath—the last time the company waited until it reached $89.75 a share.
• Last year Wal-Mart and its associates made charitable contributions that totaled almost $2 billion—that's more than the entire chain pulled down in sales in 1981. And it's an amount roughly equivalent to the total annual sales last year of textiles producer WestPoint Stevens ($1.8 billion).
• Since it began releasing financial data back in the early '70s, Wal-Mart sales and earnings both have at least doubled every five years. And in the go-go days of rapid expansion, it virtually quadrupled its sales and profits every five years between 1976 and 1991.
• Last year, Wal-Mart's profit of $6.7 billion was as much as the entire chain did in sales in 1985.
• Having pretty much saturated the U.S. market, international sales are an increasingly crucial focus for the company. Last year, Wal-Mart operated 1,170 stores in nine foreign countries, and roughly one of every four sales dollars was generated overseas.