BENTONVILLE, Ark. — A year after its worst holiday sales season ever, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. may rebound to have a good season after finding the right mix of merchandise and marketing to complement its return to a focus on low prices.

A whiff of this already showed up when the nation's largest retailer posted third-quarter earnings Tuesday of $2.86 billion, an 8 percent rise that beat Wall Street expectations.

The company earned 70 cents per share, up from 62 cents per share in the same period a year ago. The 70 cents includes an after-tax gain equal to 1 cent per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast earnings of 67 cents per share on revenue of $91.67 billion

Wal-Mart had revenue of $91.95 billion in the period ending Oct. 31, up 8.8 percent from $84.47 billion a year ago.

Wal-Mart shares spiked $2.65, or 6.1 percent, to close at $45.97 Tuesday.

Retail experts say Wal-Mart's flagship U.S. stores may be in the midst of a turnaround after two years of a zigzag course between upscale and discount goods that has slowed sales growth.

Third-quarter sales at stores open at least a year, not counting fuel, were up 1.5 percent in the company's U.S. stores, same as a year ago. The company expects same-store sales for the fourth quarter to rise no more than 2 percent.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable operator, on Wednesday will start offering corporate e-mail and document sharing services to small and medium-sized business customers that buy its high-speed Internet service.The Philadelphia-based company will use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. to enable users to also jointly access calendars and track tasks in the office or on the road. Comcast will handle round-the-clock tech support.The Internet-based services will be free for two to eight users, depending on the Internet package ordered. Beyond eight users, the cost is $3.99 or $6.99 a month for each user based on the version desired. The storage capacity is 2 gigabytes per user."It's a huge market opportunity all by itself," said Bill Stemper, president of Comcast Business Services, a division created about a year ago to go after business accounts.He said there are at least 5 million small businesses with 20 or fewer employees in Comcast's market nationwide.