Macy's flagship store in New York City.
From: Southern Ledger
Macy’s Inc. swung to a loss in its fiscal third quarter as sales dropped more than 7%, with the retailer saying the holiday season would be a nail-biter and it saw no benefit in being optimistic for next year.
The department store operator also said Wednesday that it slashed its budget for 2009 capital expenditures by almost half as it navigated the deteriorating economy. Macy’s reiterated its profit outlook for the year but said it would be at the low end of the range if current sales trends continued.
As for the upcoming holiday season, “it will be a nail-biter,” Chief Financial Officer Karen Hoguet told analysts in a conference call. She also noted that Macy’s planned to have inventories for spring and fall 2009 below last year’s levels, saying, “We don’t see an upside in being optimistic.”
Macy’s said it lost $44 million, or 10 cents a share, in the quarter ended Nov. 1, after a profit of $33 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier. Excluding costs related to the consolidation of three regional divisions that totaled $16 million — $10 million after tax or 2 cents a share — the loss was 8 cents a share.
Sales fell to $5.49 billion; analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were expecting, on average, a loss of 19 cents a share on $5.49 billion in sales.
Shares of Cincinnati-based Macy’s fell $1.04, or 11.1%, to $8.37 after the earnings news.
Hopefully we’ll see some awesome Black Friday deals
Hit the clearance racks…. full of cute stuff..
Shop online, its easier and cheaper
outsourcing the manual labor jobs and the customer service jobs are not a bad thing. those jobs do not require much skill or education. so lets outsource them to people who have no access to education or training. in america we have access to higher education and should be striving higher than those jobs anyway. america has more resources, more schools, more opportunites. americans should strive higher. it is embarassing that only 30% of american high school graduates go to college. that number should be higher. we can do better. and in doing better we are also helping others who are less fortunate by outsourcing jobs.