Hi, this is Carol Schumacher, vice president of investor relations for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Thanks for joining us today for our earnings call to review the fourth quarter and full year results of fiscal 2014. The date of this call is February 20, 2014. This call is the property of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and is intended for the use of Walmart shareholders and the investment community. It should not be reproduced in any way. This call will contain statements that Walmart believes are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, and that are intended to enjoy the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by that Act. Please note that a cautionary statement regarding the forward-looking statements will be made following Charles Holley’s remarks in this call. Our press release and transcript are available on our corporate website – stock.walmart.com. Please also note that we have two additional releases out this morning. One release announces our annual dividend for fiscal 2015, and a second details our small store expansion strategy in Walmart U.S. for this fiscal year. As a reminder, for fiscal 2014 which ended Jan. 31, 2014, we utilized a 53-week comp reporting calendar, with the 53rd week being included in the Q4 reporting period. Back in our Q3 earnings release, we provided you with an adjusted fiscal year 2013 Q4 14-week comp for comparability to our Q4 comp guidance for this fiscal year. Our Q4 reporting period began on Oct. 26, 2013 and ran through Jan. 31, 2014. Consistent with industry practice, we will not adjust the reported fiscal 2014 comps. Therefore, for this year, quarter-to-date and year-to-date comps will be based upon 13- and 52-week periods, respectively, compared with 14-week and 53-week periods that we reported…

Thanks, Carol, and good morning everyone. I’d like to share with you how excited and humbled I am to serve as the CEO of Walmart. It’s truly an honor to lead this company and serve our associates. We have a dedicated team of associates around the world who work hard every day to deliver on our purpose. As I complete my third week in this role, I appreciate the support from Mike and the leadership team on carrying out a smooth transition. Being part of Walmart for over 23 years gives me some perspective and appreciation of the past, but most of all, I’m excited about our future. Now, let’s get to the business of today. On a consolidated basis, Walmart’s underlying EPS rose 2.0% for the full year to $5.11, including the fourth quarter’s EPS of $1.60. On a reported basis, EPS for fiscal 2014 decreased 3.2% to $4.85, including $1.34 in the fourth quarter. Claire will cover the details behind our EPS shortly. 4 Our company added $11.9 billion in net sales on a constant currency basis this year to reach more than $477 billion, an increase of 2.5% over last year. This excludes the negative impact of more than $5 billion from currency exchange rate fluctuations and an approximately $730 million benefit from acquisitions. While we made operational adjustments to lower our expense base, they were not sufficient to deliver leverage for the full year. Consolidated underlying operating income rose 0.2%, but on a reported basis, operating income decreased 3.1% for the year. Walmart U.S. was a key contributor to our overall profit growth, with operating income up 4%. Walmart U.S. also added almost $5 billion in annual net sales. We were encouraged by our comp performance in the first half of the fourth quarter, including the…

Thank you, Doug. I’ll begin by going through our fourth quarter P&L results and wrap up with a summary of our full year. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, Walmart reported diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $1.34, compared to $1.67 last year. On January 31, we updated EPS guidance, including details on a number of discrete items, which impacted our fourth quarter results. The total EPS impact of these discrete items on continuing operations for the quarter and the year was $0.26 per share. A detailed explanation for each of these items is indicated within today’s press release. The discrete items and the respective EPS impact were as follows: Brazil non-income tax contingencies $0.06, Brazil employment claim contingencies $0.05, Brazil and China store closures $0.06, China store lease expense charges $0.03, India transaction $0.05, Sam’s Club U.S. staff restructuring & club closure $0.01 Therefore, our underlying EPS – meaning EPS excluding the discrete items – was $1.60. Last quarter, we also increased our full-year estimate for our incremental investment in e-commerce to $0.10. However, during the fourth quarter, this investment was approximately $0.04 per share, bringing the total fiscal 2014 incremental investment in e-commerce to $0.11 per share. Consolidated net sales increased 1.4%, or $1.8 billion, for a fourth quarter total of $128.8 billion. On a constant currency basis, consolidated net sales would have increased 2.8% over last year’s fourth quarter to $130.6 billion. With respect to comp sales, total U.S. comp sales, without fuel, decreased 0.4% for the 14-week period ended January 31. Bill and Roz will provide more details for Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club. Consolidated membership and other income increased 12.7% to $920 million. The increase was primarily driven by the sale of certain real estate assets within our U.S. segments, which was…

Thank you, Claire. In the fourth quarter, the U.S. retail business environment was challenging. It was marked by a shortened holiday season, severe winter storms, and reduced government benefits. While these factors impacted our business, they also brought out the best in our associates and have further cemented our customers’ reliance on our commitment to price leadership. Net sales grew by $1.8 billion or 2.4%. For the 14 weeks ending January 31, comp store sales were down 0.4%, with ticket up 1.3% and traffic down 1.7%. In the absence of a reduction of government SNAP benefits, which represented approximately 40 basis points of impact to comp sales, we believe the quarter would have been flat. Additionally, comps were pressured by winter storms, which forced the closure of over 200 stores at some point over the course of quarter. While we’re disappointed with comp sales, there are a number of things that made me particularly proud. We kicked off the season with a successful Black Friday event, led by strong customer response to the one-hour-guarantee program. We followed that with an excellent Cyber Monday, which marked the biggest sales day in walmart.com’s history. I’m pleased with our event execution and coordination between our online business and our physical stores. Our commitment to price leadership, aggressive marketing and strong execution helped us deliver a positive sales comp during the 6-week holiday season ending December 27, 2013. Due in large part to our holiday performance, we gained share across all of our tracked general merchandise categories, including entertainment, toys, automotive, stationery, home and apparel, for the 13 weeks ending January 4, 2014, according to The NPD Group. In addition, we continue to be pleased with the strength of our small formats. These stores continue to deliver positive comp sales and traffic increases each…

Thank you, Bill. Let me start by saying how honored I am to lead Walmart’s growing international business. I’m proud to be part of such a strong leadership team that is committed to advancing our global mission of saving people money so they can live better around the world. As we’ve said for some time now, we’re operating in a challenging global environment, with low inflation, relatively high unemployment and fragile consumer confidence leading to modest consumer spending. Having said that, we’re aggressively focused on leading the business with a long-term view on our customer, and we’re confident that our teams are aligned on the right strategies to succeed and deliver our core mission. Our strategy is a simple promise of being in good businesses and running them well. This lays the groundwork for delivering our financial priorities – growth, leverage and returns. We’ve initiated actions in Mexico, Brazil, China and India to improve our operating model in those key countries, and this will continue to be a priority this year. Looking forward, we’re focused on several key areas: • First is to deliver on our role of being a strong growth vehicle for the company. This can come in many forms, but we will continue to focus aggressively on driving comp sales in each of our markets. This is the most efficient manner for us to drive top-line as well as returns. We will be the lowest cost operator in each market. We’re in good shape in many markets, but we have room to improve everywhere. Driving the productivity loop is core to our operating model and how we serve our customers. We will be passionate about price leadership wherever we operate. We will build a platform for profitable growth in China. We’re encouraged by the progress we’ve made…

: Let’s begin with the Q4 results. Similar to other retailers, the unforeseen winter weather was a significant headwind to the quarter. There were a number of bright spots, however, such as positive savings member traffic and their strong response to our new merchandise. Let me walk you through the highs and lows of Q4. Going into the quarter, we were solidly positioned to have a successful holiday season. Sales and club traffic accelerated at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, led primarily by our exclusive Sunday evening VIP Event, which posted a very strong high single-digit comp. However, traffic slowed following Thanksgiving, as severe winter weather covered geographic areas where we are highly penetrated, particularly the Midwest and the Plains regions. This caused a rather pronounced sales lull prior to Christmas, disrupting critical holiday shopping weekends and cancelling many holiday functions. This impact was further compounded by a shortened selling season, which limited our opportunity to recover sales, particularly in our food and beverage categories. While this boosted our online performance, we were disappointed to see that sales did not materialize as expected. Our comp for the 14-week period ending Jan. 31, 2014, excluding fuel, declined 0.1%, comprised of a traffic increase of 1.2% and a ticket decline of 1.3%. On a positive note, our new merchandise is resonating well with our savings member segment, or those shopping for their personal needs. However, the continued shortfalls in our business member segment, driven primarily by convenience store consolidation and a declining tobacco business, pressured our results. Business member traffic and ticket were both negative this quarter. If you’re familiar with our business, it shouldn’t surprise you that our business member base has been declining. Many of the small businesses we serve make a big difference to the economic environment that we…

Thanks, Roz. Let me wrap up today’s discussion by providing some thoughts on the company’s performance last year. On the positive, we delivered over $473 billion in net sales. E-commerce sales grew over 30% to more than $10 billion, including acquisitions. Walmart U.S. continued their excellent trend of leveraging expenses. International made progress on reducing inventory. Sam’s Club had solid growth in membership income. And, despite tough, sluggish economies, we grew underlying operating income over last year. Now, we did have some challenges. Currency negatively impacted consolidated net sales by over $5 billion. Our U.S. businesses faced several headwinds this past year, including the reversal of the two% payroll tax cut, the overhang of sequestration, a reduction in government food benefits, and severe weather in the fourth quarter affected sales more than we had anticipated. All of these negatively affected comp sales. Sluggish sales, our stepped up investment in Global eCommerce, as well as ongoing investments in our leverage and compliance organizations, made it difficult to leverage operating expenses as a company. We also did not anticipate the 26 cents of discrete items in the fourth quarter. Now, let me frame the remainder of my comments today around the areas where we need to focus. Our financial priorities of growth, leverage and returns continue to guide us. I’ll begin with growth. As Doug said, Walmart needs to be more nimble and responsive to stay ahead in the fast-changing retail industry. We’re very focused on driving better customer traffic and growing comp sales. You should expect that we will continue to invest in price and improving service. We will also continue to invest in growing our store base. Small formats represent a great growth opportunity for us in many of our markets, including the U.S., Mexico and the U.K. You heard…