Macy’s ‘locked and loaded’ for holidays after tough quarter

Bloomberg

After clearing up unwanted items last quarter as sales slumped, Macy’s Inc said it is now geared up for improvement in the crucial holiday quarter.
The department-store offered mixed signals, cutting its full-year profit outlook after a key sales metric fell more than it anticipated last quarter.
With some of the bad news now past and inventories cleared, the retailer has room for improvement in the December quarter.
“We look at the fourth quarter, we’re locked and loaded,”CEO Jeff Gennette said. “Every single promotion has been planned, every specials’ been planned.”
With so much at stake for retailers ahead of the gift-giving season, every earnings report is scrutinised for signs that American consumers can keep up robust spending.
Macy’s same-store sales, a closely watched metric for retailers, fell 3.5% in the fiscal third quarter for locations it owned and licensed, a sharper decline than Macy’s anticipated. The retailer now sees full-year same-store sales declining 1% to 1.5%.
The Cincinnati-based company, which also lowered revenue growth estimates for the year, blamed the sluggish sales on a litany of reasons: Cold weather that sparks coat-buying didn’t come
soon enough, international tourism was soft and lower-tier malls didn’t perform as well as anticipated.