Home a winner at Macy's, Bloomingdale's

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Accents Today, 11/8/2012 10:20:09 AM

Macy's Inc.'s third quarter performance benefitted from strong sales in home at both its Macy's and Bloomingdale's divisions, the department store chain during the third quarter. Textiles and furniture were cited as particularly good.

During a conference call earlier this week, an analyst asked CFO Karen Hoguet about how Macy's expects to handle increasing competition from JCP's remodeling.

"Honestly, we've struck to our strategies because they are working," she responded. "I see no reason to change. It is working well for now."

The quarter also marked the company's 11th consecutive quarter of sales and earnings increases, she noted.

"The third quarter was a good period for the company," she said. "Sales were strong, but we significantly exceeded our earnings expectations and beat last year's earnings per share. ...We had expected a down quarter, so we are very pleased with these results."
For the quarter, ended Oct. 27, net income rose 0.7% to $145 million, or 36 cents per share. Sales were up 3.8% to $6.075 billion, and comps grew 3.7%.

Year to date, net income jumped 18.4% to $605 million, or $1.45. Sales rose 3.7% to $18.3 billion, and comps also increased 3.7%.

Online sales -- for macys.com and bloomingdales.com combined -- leapt 40.4% in the third quarter and 36.8% year to date, compared with the same periods in 2011.

The company said its online sales positively affected its same-store sales by 2.2 percentage points in the third quarter and 1.8 percentage points for the 29 weeks.
Online sales are included in the same-store sales calculation for Macy's Inc.