Wednesday Tipsheet: Dick’s/H.Dep. Mtg Highlights | Target Swings Axe | Wayfair +38.4%

 

Target to cut Minnesota jobs while expanding in N.Y., California by Tom Webb at Twin Cities/Pioneer Press. “What will give Minnesota economic officials heartburn is seeing the chief strategy officer, Casey Carl, boast that corporate Target is “branching out to other places” to secure talent – then showing a slide that listed Target’s growing lineup of offices in California, New York and India, on the same day it said it would cut thousands of jobs from its hometown.” Read more

 

…Star Tribune’s Kavita Kumar and Colleagues Tweet During Target Investor Conference  Read the Tweets

 

…”We did not anticipate that the cuts would be this high” by Kavita Kumar at Star Tribune. “Burt Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resource Group in New York, said the scope of the cuts was surprising. “With all the problems passed along from the prior management, we knew that the cuts would be high,” Flickinger said. “But we did not anticipate that the cuts would be this high.” Read more

 

…Brian Cornell: “The performance of City Targets has been nothing short of phenomenal” by Hadley Malcom at USA Today  Read more

 

Wal-Mart suppliers face tight talent capacity amid steady growth by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “Anywhere from 80 to 100 jobs remain unfilled at any given time, according to Cameron Smith, CEO of Cameron Smith & Associates of Rogers. Corporate recruiters on Cameron Smith’s team describe the talent pool as “tight” despite consolidation of teams resulting from mergers.” Read more

 

Home Depot gets $200M and tax breaks from Cobb County by Carla Caldwell at Atlanta Business Chronicle. “Home Depot said the money will be used to renovate the company’s Cumberland headquarters and to buy equipment for a building in Marietta that will become a new Home Depot IT center…Home Depot’s (Michael) LaFerle said 525 new jobs will be created at the new IT center.” Read more

 

***New Product Spotlight – Orchard Road Launches Series of Decorative Canning Products.  The decorative series of canning caps features three custom designs: Wild Daisy, Fruit and Gingham.  Finally something unique to drive incremental sales in the home canning and storage categories!  Come see us this weekend at the Housewares Show in booth S3920.  See the new line for the first time here.  For more information: info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.

 

FAA proposes fining Home Depot for lighter fluid leak by Jim Hammerand & Carla Caldwell at Minn./St.Paul Business Journal. “The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing a civil penalty of $96,000 against The Home Depot Inc. for alleged hazardous materials violations.” Read more

 

How a 25-Year-Old Investor Spurred Lumber Liquidators’ Plunge by Matt Townsend at Bloomberg. “Xuhua Zhou, who had dropped out of UCLA’s doctoral program in finance and become an individual investor, took an interest in Lumber Liquidators about two years ago…“It’s pretty amazing what he did on his own,” said Tilson, head of Kase Capital Management, calling Zhou “the pioneer” of the Lumber Liquidators story.” Read more

 

…Short trader stands to make $3 million if the stock goes to zero by Michelle Celarier at NY Post. Read more

 

…Shares climbed 5 percent yesterday at Bloomberg.  Read more

 

Target owed $1.9-billion from its own property firm by Marina Strauss at The Globe & Mail. “Suppliers, however, plan to fight the new claim at a court hearing on Thursday, noting it could dash their hopes to recover an estimated $400-million in the retailer’s wind-down process.” Read more

 

Look inside San Francisco’s new TargetExpress, set to open today by Annie Sciacca at San Francisco Business Times.  Read more / See the pics

 

Best Buy plans to trim another $400M after cutting $1B, CEO says by Nick Halter at Minn./St.Paul Business Journal. “The savings Joly mentioned “are not related to headcount,” a Best Buy spokesman said.” Read more

 

Wayfair Q4 Direct Revenue +38.4%  Read the release

 

Fresh Market debuts new store model for Charlotte by Jennifer Thomas at Charlotte Business Journal.  See the 28 pics / Read more

 

Home Depot at Raymond James 36th Annual Investors Conference Highlights

See the PowerPoint presentation

Richard McPhail, SVP Finance Home Depot

Housing turnover: have recovered from 3.3 million units sold in 2010 to 5 million units sold in 2014.

Two thirds of the housing stock in the United States is over 27 years old.

The Pro makes up about 3% of our customer account but about 35% of our sales and then in our store every week and every day. 

Water heaters: In 2014, when we analyzed this category we discovered that actually there were a set of clusters.

(Later this year) we will have the capability to deliver product to 90% of the nation in two days or less.

homedepot.com: we had $1.2 billion online business last year, over 36% growth in sales which represent about 4.5% penetration of total company sales. 

50% of store visits we believe are actually begun on the homedepot.com. 

Roughly 40% of all orders through homedepot.com are fulfilled through the store.

One in five customers picking up an online order actually buy an additional item while they are in our stores.

We believe that roughly 10% of all of our online orders at homedepot.com are from a customer device when they’re standing in the aisle of our store.

Read the full transcript via Seeking Alpha

 

 

Dick’s Q4 Earnings Call Highlights

 

Ed Stack, Chairman & CEO

We delivered a 10.9% increase in sales.

Our consolidated omni-channel same-store sales increased 3.4% with increases in both ticket and traffic.

The trending in hunting improved significantly during 2014. Golf trend also showed a slight improvement from the spring of 2014.

Golf Galaxy was down 7.1% with Dick’s golf business slightly better.

The balance of our business excluding hunting and golf was up 6% for the quarter.

We expect to deliver 2015 full year consolidated comp growth of 1% to 3%.

We still feel good about the number (goal) of 800 stores. 

There is no real other big initiative or other brands that we’re launching outside of (CALIA from) Carrie Underwood. And what we’re doing with that space is we’re just re-configuring some space and it would be coming out of primarily Adidas and Rebook.

Footwear business: basketball is trending better than running.

 

Andre Hawaux, CFO

In 2014 we…opened 45 net new Dick stores and end of the year with 603 Dick’s stores in 46 states.

Growth of our e-commerce business: approximately 28% over $625 million in sales in 2014.

In the first quarter of 2015 we plan to launched golfgalaxy.com on our new platform as we prepare to bring the dick’s.com e-commerce site in house in January of 2017.

The 3.8% consolidated increase in the Dick’s business was driven by a 3% increase in traffic and by 0.8% increase in sales per transaction. 

In 2015, we expect to open up approximately 45 new Dick stores relocate 9 Dick stores and relocate one Golf Galaxy store.

Expect to open 9 new Field & Stream stores this year.

Read the full transcript via Seeking Alpha

 

***

Eye-on-Retail Tipsheet is read worldwide by Retail Merchants & Executives and created early every weekday morning. We love data, earnings reports, executive presentations and stories off the beaten path that get at what’s happening in the world of retail. Contact us at info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.