Whole Foods Added to S&P 500

Natural-foods supermarket giant Whole Foods Market Inc. is poised to be added to the Standard & Poor's benchmark 500 index.  The Austin-based chain will replace MBNA Corp., which is being bought by Bank of America Corp., in the S&P 500.

Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI - News) joins the index, along with two other companies. CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS.wi) and Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA.Bwi - News) will replace Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA.B - News) and Visteon Corp. (NYSE: VC - News) and in the S&P 500 after the close of trading on Friday, December 30. Viacom is separating into two publicly trading companies consisting of new Viacom and CBS Corp.

On Wednesday, Whole Foods stock price rose $3.70 to $79.13, up 4.9 percent from the previous day's close.  S&P requires companies in its 500-index to meet certain criteria: The company must be based in the United States, post positive earnings for four consecutive quarters, trade with adequate liquidity and have a market capitalization of $4 billion, among other characteristics.

Based on the Whole Food's strong sales over the past few years and its 3.6 million square feet of stores under development, Whole Foods raised its sales goal for 2010 from $10 billion to $12 billion, says John Mackey, chairman and CEO.

For fiscal 2006, the company boosted its outlook for sales growth to between 18 percent and 21 percent from its previous estimate of 15 percent to 20 percent.

Whole Foods operates 179 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, with another 64 stores in the pipeline.