Wal-Mart lowers sales estimate

Blaming a computer error, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Wednesday lowered its September sales estimate again. The news sent shares lower in early trading and prompted analysts to speculate about what happened at the world’s largest retailer when other merchants are expected to report higher sales amid cooling temperatures and easing gasoline prices.

Wal-Mart reduced its sales estimate to 1.3 percent from 1.8 percent on Saturday. The discounter originally forecast sales at stores open at least a year in a range of 1 percent to 3 percent.

Wal-Mart said Wednesday it revised the figure because it “incorrectly coded” 235 Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Club warehouse stores in calculating comparable sales for the five weeks comprising the September period. It said that total sales will not be affected.

Wal-Mart blamed the shortfall in September on difficult comparisons with the year-ago period, when same-store sales surged 3.8 percent on a buying spree related to Hurricane Katrina.

Wal-Mart’s lackluster performance is expected to be one of a few exceptions when the nation’s retailers report their final September results Thursday. Thomson Financial expects a 5.1 percent same-store sales gain, excluding Wal-Mart’s figures.

•Starbucks Corp. shares soared Wednesday, even before the company announced September sales figures that trounced Wall Street estimates and also that it had opened more than 2,000 new stores in its latest fiscal year.

Shares of the world’s largest specialty coffee chain climbed $1.95, or 5.7 percent, to close at $35.96 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, its highest close since early July, then rose another $1.67, or 4.6 percent, to $37.63 in after-hours trading.

For the fiscal year that ended Oct. 2, Starbucks reported $7.8 billion in revenue, up 22 percent from fiscal 2005, when it posted $6.4 billion in revenue.

•Shares of ImClone Systems Inc. soared nearly 8 percent Wednesday, a day after the biotechnology company revealed in a regulatory filing that an unspecified drug maker offered to buy it for $36 a share, a significant premium over its current price.

ImClone said it turned down the deal because it was opposed by the billionaire financier Carl Icahn, who owns 14 percent of the company.

But in the latest series of barbs exchanged between Icahn and ImClone, Icahn said in a filing Wednesday that he opposed a $35.50 a share bid by the drug company but said that he was never informed of the sweetened offer.