NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Aug. 14, 2014--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings on Wal-Mart Stores Inc., including the 'AA' corporate credit rating and stable outlook, are unaffected by company's second quarter earnings announced today. In fact, the results support our expectations and assumptions about operating trends for the current fiscal year. We believe the flat comparable-store sales in the U.S. show incremental improvement—they were negative during fiscal 2014 and in the first quarter of fiscal 2015. As a result, we expect moderate improvement in the second half of the year with slightly positive same-store sales in the U.S. going forward. Nonetheless, overall sales performance at Wal-Mart, by far the largest retailer in the U.S., also
