The Great Wal-Mart Battery Trade-Out (XIDE, JCI, WMT)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Exide Technologies (NASDAQ: XIDE) is getting crushed today after news that the company was notified by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) that the retailer will stop selling the company’s auto batteries in WalMart stores.  It would be the understatement of the year to note that when companies lose WalMart as one of their retail distributors, it hurts.  But don’t bother telling that to Johnson Controls Inc. (NYSE: JCI).  Johnson has just announced that it was selected as the sole source provider of its Automotive, Marine, Powersport and Lawn & Garden battery requirements for WalMart stores in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Johnson Controls Inc. (NYSE: JCI) is only up 1.65% at $29.50 on the news. Perhaps that small gain is because the company has a $19+ billion market cap and because it is already expected to generate over $32 billion in 2010 revenues.

Before the drop and loss of WalMart today, Exide Technologies (NASDAQ: XIDE) was expected to generate about $2.6 billion in 2010 revenues (March-2010 fiscal year-end). That will obviously be far less once the loss is factored into estimates.  Exide shares are down 28.4% at $5.67.  Exide has a post-drop market cap of only about $436 million and its shares have traded in a range of $1.83 to $8.87 over the last 52 weeks.

JON C. OGG

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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