Shop Talk
Retailers, consumers and prices
Check Out Line: More quarterly earnings to parse
Check out the latest quarterly earnings to size up.
Williams-Sonoma reported a better-than-expected profit on lower costs and strong holiday sales, and the home goods chain said it sees sales and earnings rising for the year.
The operator of the Pottery Barn, West Elm and Williams-Sonoma chains, which won many shoppers in the holiday season by offering more lower-priced home decor items, also boosted its quarterly dividend by 8.3 percent.
PepsiCo and Kimberly-Clark, meanwhile, both backed their 2010 earnings outlooks.
Tiffany’s message was more mixed as the upscale jeweler’s profit was lower-than-expected, but its full-year forecast was above the Street’s expectations.
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Check Out Line: December sales fall short of expectations
Check out the U.S. government’s take on December retail sales, which totaled $352.99 billion.
U.S. retail sales fell 0.3 percent in December versus November, while analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a rise of 0.5 percent.
If you compare December 2009 to December 2008, sales actually rose 5.4 percent. Excluding autos, gasoline and building materials, sales rose 3.2 percent from a year earlier.
“Obviously the market was primed for a better recovery from the consumer,” said Boris Schlossberg, director of research at GFT Forex. “That’s going to be the story going forward — will (the) consumer be able to take over from the government and replace demand that has come so far from government spending. If the consumer is unable to do that, it’s going to pose some significant risks to the global recovery story.”
What types of retailers were the biggest losers?
Sales of building and garden equipment fell 5.8 percent year over year, while furniture and home furnishings sales fell 3.8 percent.
It doesn’t seem like that played much of a role in sales at Williams-Sonoma, whose holiday period sales rose 7.4 percent. The owner of chains such as Pottery Barn, West Elm and, of course, Williams-Sonoma, said quarterly revenue and profit should top Wall Street’s expectations.
Check Out Line: Consumers spending again?
Check Out home-related retailers Sears Holdings and Williams-Sonoma reporting better-than-expected quarterly results. Does this mean consumers are feathering their nests again?
Somewhat, according to Barclays analyst Michael Lasser, who said Williams-Sonoma’s results were “an indication that upper-income consumers are spending a bit more, which is not surprising given the rally in the stock market and the stabilization in the housing market.”
Williams-Sonoma, which also operates Pottery Barn and West Elm, has updated its styles and slashed prices on some items to woo shoppers, despite worries that the move might tarnish its image as a high-end retailer.
But it’s not only high-end chains showing signs of life. Kmart, the value-priced retailer that sells everything from appliances to clothing, posted its first increase in same-store sales since 2005, and only its second since 2001. The chain, which is owned by Sears, took back its shoe operations this year from Footstar, which had operated within Kmart stores.
Even Sears, which depends more heavily on the housing market due to its Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances, posted its best performance since the fourth quarter of 2007, and outperformed competing home improvement chains like Home Depot and Lowe’s.
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Williams-Sonoma stands by Home stores; seeks relief on rent
Williams-Sonoma Home stores are a drag on profit for its parent company, but the San Francisco-based retailer is not giving up on it yet, even as it faces difficulty lowering some rents. Williams-Sonoma Inc, which reported much better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday, said it is in discussions with landlords about potentially closing three underperforming Williams-Sonoma Home stores, which sell high-end items such as custom-upholstered sofas and formal china. But it is not yet at the point of discussing shutting down the 10-store chain completely. “We’re really not at that point and it’s not something that we’re discussing at this point,” said Sharon McCollam, the retailer’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer. “The focus in Home is profitability this year, not growth,” she said, adding that in the past the company had been pushing its namesake offshoot to grow, a strategy that would be difficult to continue in the recession, as consumers pare spending. Like many retailers Williams-Sonoma leases its store space, and therefore faces obstacles when trying to close stores since mall operators may be loathe to have empty spaces. Yet Williams-Sonoma Chief Executive Howard Lester said there are not that many stores he would like to close even if he had the option. “I would say that if we had our option, it would probably be somewhere around 5 percent of our stores today we would close, if we could,” he said on a conference call. That translates to roughly 31 stores, since the company ended 2008 with 627 Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, West Elm, Williams-Sonoma Home and outlet stores. “What we would rather do … is where we’ve had serious sales declines, like we’ve seen for the last year or so, and particularly since last fall, we would like to have rent reductions while we get through this,” Lester said. “I think that’s probably preferable to the landlords so that we can get through this period together, but leave the store there.” That is often easier said than done. Simon Property Group, the largest U.S. mall owner and operator, said in January that it does not always grant retailers’ renegotiation requests. “Candidly, in many instances, we do not agree to give any kind of accommodation,” said Simon President and COO Rick Sokolov on a conference call in January. “These are not one-way negotiations. We’re going to be talking to them about what their prospects are, what rent they are willing to pay, are they willing to extend their terms.” “There are a lot of other aspects of this, and happily we’re positioned … to be able to have these negotiations on a very even footing with the tenants,” he added. For its part Williams-Sonoma said it is just continuing to push its case. “I can’t say that it’s going as well as we’d like for it to,” Lester said. “With certain landlords we’ve had some real success and others are more difficult, but it continues.” It’s not only Williams-Sonoma angling for a break on the rent. Fast-food chain Quiznos said last week it has renegotiated more than 40 leases for its franchise owners, with an average reduction of 15 to 20 percent in lease payments, while other restaurant chains such as Starbucks and Rubio’s Restaurants said they are also negotiating leases.
(Photo: Reuters)
Check Out Line: Mixed messages from retailers
Check out retailers’ profits and forecasts.
A discerning shopper, or investor for that matter, could browse the aisles of the retail financial world and come away with very different messages on the strength of the U.S. economy depending on which company’s results they chose.
On the plus side, upscale jeweler Tiffany posted a better-than-expected profit and raised its full-year outlook, although that was driven by strong sales overseas. Tiffany expects U.S. same-store sales to return to growth in the fourth quarter. Shoe and hat retailer Genesco, and home-appliance and consumer-electronics retailer Conn’s also topped Wall Street’s views and boosted their forecasts.
For the pessimists out there, Williams-Sonoma saw its profit fall and it cut its forecast, while Sears Holdings also fell short of expectations amid the weak housing market.
Somewhere in the middle was discount store operator Fred’s, which reported a profit in line with what analysts were expecting.
Retailers have been hit in varying degrees as consumers dial back discretionary spending due to the pressure from high food and gasoline prices. Even as the U.S. economy grew stronger than first thought in the second quarter, economists see growth slowing as the year progresses.
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Check Out Line: Going micro to offset the macro
Check out Williams-Sonoma predicting that this fiscal year, it ”will be operating in one of the most challenging macro-economic environments we have seen in many years.”
The upscale home goods retailer, which operates the Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn and West Elm chains, reported higher-than-expected fourth quarter profit on Thursday, helped by an extra week of sales in the quarter compared with last year.
But the deteriorating U.S. housing market has not been a friend to retailers that make a living selling furniture and home decorations, and Williams-Sonoma, not very surprisingly, gave an earnings forecast for its current fiscal year that is below Wall Street expectations.
Acknowleging that it cannot turn around the macro environment, it is choosing to focus on a micro-enviroment — its own business.
It said it will be ”focused on the things we can control,” like reducing discretionary costs, keeping a close eye on inventory and cutting the number of catalogs it mails.
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They could also trying improving the quality of the garbage they carry in their stores.
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