Tuesday’s Eye-on-Retail Tipsheet: H.Depot’s US Comp Jumps 11.4% | JCP Collapse -11.9% | Amazon Site Down
“Home Depot US Same-Store Sales Jump 11.4% in Q2” “The Home Depot today reported sales of $22.5 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2013. On a like for like basis, comparable store sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2013 were positive 10.7 percent, and comp sales for U.S. stores were positive 11.4 percent. Total sales increased 9.5 percent from the second quarter of fiscal 2012.” Read Home Depot’s Earnings Release
“Home Depot Earnings Call Webcast: Listen Live Today at 9am ET” Webcast Link
“Home Depot reaps benefits from U.S. housing rebound” at Reuters. “A recovery in the U.S. housing market helped Home Depot Inc beat analysts’ quarterly profit and sales estimates on Tuesday, prompting the world’s largest home improvement chain to raise its outlook for the fiscal year. Shares of Home Depot were up 3.3 percent at $77.70 in trading before the market opened. The results, which came just weeks after data showed that U.S. home prices rose in May, gave more evidence that the housing market was healing after years of weakness.” Read more
“J.C. Penney second-quarter same-store sales fall 11.9 percent” at Reuters. “The higher level of markdowns and lower-than-expected sales deepened Penney’s net loss in the quarter to $586 million, or $2.66 per share, from $147 million, or 67 cents per share a year earlier. Overall sales fell 11.9 percent to $2.66 billion.” Read more
“Sears’ New Internet Strategy: Late to the Party….Again” by Walter Loeb at Forbes. “The list of goods for sale is long, it includes fashion and fashion accessories, home furnishing, building materials etc. However, similar to my horrible experience with the Ford Motor Company which does not back up their suppliers, Sears will not back up anything their third party vendors sell in the Marketplace.” Read more
“Wal-Mart looks to trade gift cards for gadgets” by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “Wal-Mart said this week it will take unwanted iPhone, Galaxy S3 or other electronic gadgets in exchange for gift cards that can be spent in its stores or online. The big box giant joins Amazon, eBay and other retailers wanting consumers’ cast-off electronic gadgets, a mission that analysts said is two fold.” Read more
“Amazon.com Struggles With Website Troubles” by Matt Egan at Fox Business. “The issues come just days after The Washington Post, which is being acquired by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos, revealed it was hacked into. Amazon.com users began reporting an outage shortly before 3 p.m. ET on Monday and access to the website appeared to have been restored about 45 minutes later.” Read more
“Cities Try to Curb Proliferation of Dollar Stores” by Edward Sifuentes at UT San Diego. “Sue Doucette — who has invested thousands of dollars on a building at 1281 North Santa Fe Avenue that she plans to lease to a Family Dollar store — said the bargain shops meet a need in the community. At last week’s City Council meeting, Doucette urged the panel to support her project. “I understand that you don’t want to be known as the city of dollar stores, but our property is on North Santa Fe,” Doucette said. “It’s a low-income area. There’s a need for that type of store. There’s nothing like that in that area.” Read more
“The Humbling of Department Stores” at The Economist. “It would be tempting to write off department stores altogether if some were not doing surprisingly well. Same-store sales at Nordstrom, a Seattle-based luxury retailer, have risen by 7.5% on average over the past three years. Those of Macy’s, which operates mainly in the tougher middle market, rose by 4.5%. Department stores started collecting data about their customers through loyalty-card schemes long before their rivals.” Read more
“Amazon bubble building gets a cellular look” by Sanjay Bhatt at The Seattle Times. “The new design gives the three intersecting spheres a more organic, cellular look instead of the angular panels of the original proposal. It envisions the structural-steel skeleton following the geometry of a “Catalan sphere,” with each facet shaped like a rounded, elongated pentagon. A starlike frame in the center of each pentagonal facet would connect the corners. (Visualize the cross-section of an okra slice.)” See & Read More
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