Consumer Companies Lower on Holiday-Season Fears -- Consumer Roundup

Shares of retailers and other consumer-services companies ticked down amid nervousness about the outlook for the holiday season.

Wal-Mart shares rose after the world's largest retailer by sales said it would redouble cost-cutting efforts, digging in for a war of attrition with Amazon.com. Wal-Mart said it will open fewer than 25 new U.S. stores in the 2019 fiscal year, which ends in January 2019, focusing its capital spending on remodeling existing stores and expanding home-delivery and e-commerce offerings. Wal-Mart targeted a 40% increase in U.S. revenue from online purchases for next year. While Wal-Mart has the resources to go toe-to-toe with Amazon, other major stores are less likely to have an answer to continued incursions on their turf this holiday season, analysts warned.

Procter & Gamble said activist investor Nelson Peltz narrowly lost his bid to win a board seat at the consumer-products giant but the head of hedge fund Trian Fund Management contested the result, saying it was still too close to call.

Rob Curran, rob.curran@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 10, 2017 16:46 ET (20:46 GMT)