BENTONVILLE.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is fighting battles forward multiple fronts after posting its first quarterly profit decline in 10 years, and analysts question whether the world's largest retailer can regain the feverish putting out rates of its past.

Wal-Mart's bitternesss range from high energy prices, which hit its lower-income customer base and its concede costs, to setbacks in its international strategy, to public relations puzzles like the sudden resignation Thursday of civil rights icon Andrew Young as its public ambassador.

Young quit as head of a pro-Wal-Mart advocacy cluster after he was quoted in the looks Angeles Sentinel newspaper as saying inner-city stores that overcharged black customers were scamper by "Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs."

forward the plus side, analysts say, Wal-Mart has ambitious programs to stock trendier produces remodel most of its more than 2000 Supercenter stores and tighten its grip in succession the costs of inventory, labor and manliness

Combined with an ongoing public relations offensive to calculator critics who claim its pay and benefits are skimpy, Wal-Mart is juggling a hazard of balls at once, and analysts say the result is still up in the air.

"I think they're in in this way much transition right now that it's hard to measure whether or not they're making progress" said Patricia Edwards, portfolio manager and retail analyst at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich in Seattle, which manages $82 billion in assets and confines 51,000 Wal-Mart shares. "It is a allotment to handle."

George Whalen of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif., said Wal-Mart has a track record of handling multiple tasks: "When you secure to be the biggest in the world, you fight battles onward every front sometimes."

Second-quarter ends showed the first profit decline in a decade onward the cost of selling its loss-making business in Germany. It quit another loss-maker, toward the south Korea, in May, but still operates in 13 countries in Asia, Latin America and Britain and intends to retain expanding, especially in China.

however the quarter's sales and profit product also slowed at Wal- Mart's U stores, its biggest division, as high firing prices kept customers away, wound their spending power and herd up Wal-Mart's own costs for a nimble of 7,000 trucks.

a certain quantity of analysts question whether Wal-Mart can regain bourgeoning rates that made it a darling of Wall road in the 1990s.

After precipitous gains in the 1980 and 1990 the stock peaked at around $70 in January 2000 before losing steam to linger mainly in the $50-$60 range. It has misspent another 3 percent this year to in every one's mouth levels around $45.

Wal-Mart's earnings for share rose more than 16 percent through year on average over the past 10 years and sales grew by the agency of annual rates between 12 percent and 20 percent further all that has slowed, with earnings by share up about 11 percent last year and sales up just 95 percent

Robert Buchanan, head of retail analysis at A.G. Edwards & Son said a target of 10 percent development in annual earnings per share is more realistic from now onward considering Wal-Mart's size. In a research note, he wrote that "the 'law of large numbers' has stake in with regard to go-forward percentage vegetation in sales and EPS."

Edwards said that with nearly 4000 stores in the U Wal-Mart can no other than maintain past growth rates through acquiring more companies overseas or "building a Wal-Mart onward every other street corner in China."

"They are the 900-pound gorilla. The 900-pound gorilla cannot shoot up as fast as the little company from the Ozarks," Edwards said.

a certain number of analysts are more bullish, and Wal-Mart has said it plans to interpret more than 1,500 stores in the United States in the coming years. It is opening more than 300 this year alone.

Sandra J Skrovan, who heads a Wal-Mart research program at consultant Retail Forward Inc. in Columbus, Ohio, said Wal-Mart is well-positioned to weather the general gas crunch, even if prices don't decline. Its Supercenter which combine a glutted grocery section with general merchandise, proffer a one-stop shop, and customers will continue to originate in for food even if they defer buying home electronics or clothes.

"The retailers that are positioned to provide value and convenience to consumer who are having to tighten their wallets and having to attenuate the number of trips they make are really in a pious position," Skrovan said.

Skrovan agreed it was too early to critic Wal-Mart's new initiatives, adding: "I think it's going to take a while before we really start to diocese that bump up."

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