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For Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the road to a higher share price is paved with chicken feet and Spam.
The world's largest retailer, long the biggest importer of goods into the U.S., last year joined a list of the top 100 U.S. exporters for the first time. It sent 39 percent more shipping containers overseas than General Motors Corp., and surpassed cigarette maker Altria Group Inc.
Although only a fraction of the $18 billion in goods it bought from China alone in 2005, exports will increase further as Wal-Mart targets a third of its sales growth from abroad amid the slowest gains at U.S. stores in at least 27 years.
International sales will expand to 30 percent of Wal-Mart's total in 2010, up from 22 percent last year, estimates Citigroup Inc. analyst Deborah Weinswig.
International markets ''could be like a savior for Wal-Mart,'' said David Abella, an analyst at Rochdale Investment Management in New York, with $2.4 billion in assets including Wal-Mart shares.
The expansion may help end the seven-year stock slump for Wal-Mart. The shares will rise 29 percent in the next 12 months, says Weinswig. She is top-ranked by Institutional Investor and rates the stock ''buy.''
Since reaching a record $69.44 in December 1999, the per-share price has dropped by a third. Wal-Mart will report quarterly financial results Aug. 14. The stock trades in the $45 range.
Shareholders have yet to credit Wal-Mart for its overseas growth, Abella said.
''Retail investors don't yet know how to view international operations,'' he said.
Wal-Mart has set a goal of attaining a third of sales and profit growth from outside the U.S. It exceeded that last year, with international accounting for half of sales gains.
To fill Wal-Mart shelves overseas, three ships a week leave the docks of Seaboard Marine in Miami, pointing toward Central America, said Jose Perez-Jones, senior vice president of the Miami- based shipping company. They contain products from 35 states and Puerto Rico, Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner said.
Labor groups and politicians blame Wal-Mart for hastening the demise of American manufacturing jobs as it purchased low-priced toys, electronics and clothing from Asia and Latin America. It brought in 715,000 standard shipping containers last year, holding its perennial spot as the top importer, the Journal of Commerce says.
As an exporter, Wal-Mart ranked 38th, sending 26,200 containers, surpassing 25,100 for Altria and 18,800 for GM. This year Wal-Mart will ship $2 million of shopping carts made by Wagoner, Oklahoma-based Unarco Inc. to its Central American stores, up from none two years ago.
Sales to Wal-Mart's international stores are ''just getting warmed up,'' said Taft O'Quin, president of closely held Unarco.
Wal-Mart's first foray outside the U.S. was in 1991, with the purchase of two Mexico City stores. As of July, 42 percent of 7,022 stores were international, including a stake in 101 Trust-Mart stores in China.
Wal-Mart sends soup, shelving, packaged goods and perishables like beef to stores, as well as commodities such as cotton to provide the material for items made overseas and sold in the U.S.
''We have much more robust growth overseas,'' said Sarah Thorn, director of international trade, who said the company directly shipped $671 million of goods to stores outside the U.S. in 2006.
The export figure based on containers is understated because it only counts cargo where Wal-Mart is the shipper of record, excluding goods sent by manufacturers under their name to Wal-Mart stores, said Perez-Jones.
''They will probably triple or quadruple that because of all the stores that are opening up,'' he said.
Wal-Mart sends such iconic American brands as chocolate kisses from Pennsylvania-based Hershey Co., and Head & Shoulders shampoo from Procter & Gamble Co. of Cincinnati.
It ships Spam from Hormel Foods Corp. in Austin, Minn. Spam's 70-year history includes a role as humanitarian aid during World War II.
U.S. sales at Wal-Mart locations open at least a year, a key retail gauge because it excludes recently opened or closed stores, rose 2.1 percent in the year through January, the slowest growth since the company began tracking them in 1980.
Total international sales jumped 30 percent. They have surged 15-fold in the past decade, to $77.1 billion.
''Their best opportunities are overseas,'' said Steven Baumgarten, an analyst at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia, with $77 billion in assets including Wal-Mart shares.