Last week, Bloomberg reported that emails exchanged by Wal-Mart executives suggested that February sales so far were a "total disaster." Blaming the recent payroll tax hike, among other things, at least one exec reportedly wrote that this was the "worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company."

A spokesperson for Walmart told Bloomberg that the emails "lack the proper context."

Regardless, anything short of an outright denial could be a troubling sign for the U.S. consumer, Wal-Mart's business, and furthermore the businesses of Wal-Mart's suppliers.

The International Securities Exchange offers an index that consists of 30 major suppliers that are heavily exposed to Wal-Mart.

We pulled 18 big publicly-traded companies that get at least 20 percent of their revenue from Wal-Mart.

These are the companies that are probably most worried about the content of those leaked emails.

Eric Platt helped compile the research for this feature.

