62% of Wal-mart New Stores Are Small Format

Much discussion has taken place regarding the Wal-mart small store format.  I don’t know that I’ve seen this around though.  Of Wal-mart’s 458 new stores, 282 of them were small format.  That’s about 62% of the total.  From the earnings call:

On the topic of growth, I’m pleased to say that we’ve met our goals of opening locally relevant formats as we discussed in the October meeting for the investment community. In fiscal 2011, our organic growth included 458 net new stores, representing an 11.2% increase in store count and a 7.8% increase in square footage. This growth includes 282 new stores in smaller formats, each less than 40,000 square feet.

However, even Wal-mart admits that the Supercenter is still their highest ROI store as evidenced by this slide.

This year Wal-mart has plans to equal its square footage growth of 11 million s.f. that it produced last year.