President and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce, Neil Ashe, made a cameo appearance during Walmart’s fourth quarter earnings presentation to shed light on omnichannel investments that caused the company to forecast 2013 profits below analysts’ estimates.

It seems like forever ago that Walmart stopped reporting monthly sales and providing regular guidance updates, which is why one comment by Walmart CFO Charles Holley stood out above all the others he made this week at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Consumer & Retail Conference.

Heading into last Friday’s annual meeting, the financial community had high expectations Walmart would allocate additional funds to buy back stock, and the company didn’t disappoint. The $15 billion share repurchase authorization CFO Charles Holley announced replaced an existing $15 billion program approved one year earlier that had dwindled to just $2 billion due to the fact that Walmart was an aggressive purchaser of its own stock during the past 12 months.

There’s no way to sugarcoat the 1.8% same-store sales decline produced by Walmart’s U.S. stores division during the fourth quarter, especially after management vowed last fall that comps would turn positive during the period and end six quarters of negative results. Being so far off on sales guidance does not speak well of management’s forecasting abilities or grasp of the complexity issues that have contributed to sales weakness, and Wal-Mart Stores president and CEO Mike Duke acknowledged as much when he noted that “some of the pricing and merchandising issues in Walmart U.S. ran deeper than we expected, and they require a response that will take time to see results.”

The 1.8% comp decline is not only disappointing, but it also serves as a distraction from positive results elsewhere in the organization like an overgrown mole in the middle of a supermodel’s forehead. It’s just hard not to keep looking at that mole, or in Walmat’s case, a negative 1.8% comp even though the company has many other attractive features.

Veteran finance executive Charles Holley was named to replace Tom Schoewe as CFO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the company announced late Wednesday.