Retail

Bloomberg Investors in the retail industry are a tough crowd. Just ask Walmart Inc, which matched sales growth estimates, raised its forecast — and watched its shares drift lower in midday trading as analysts picked over the numbers. The shares fell as much as 1.2% after earlier hitting a record high. What changed? After all, the key gauge of same-store …

Bloomberg Salvatore Ferragamo SpA’s sales in Hong Kong fell 45% during the third quarter as months of anti-Beijing protests held back spending by tourists and locals alike. The decline at the Italian maker of leather pumps and silk scarves exceeded the impact estimated by some rival luxury companies. LVMH, the owner of Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, previously said sales in …

Bloomberg Magazine Luiza SA, the Brazilian retailer that is fast becoming one of the country’s leading e-commerce providers, sold shares at 43 reais each, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The company’s offering raised a total of 4.7 billion reais ($1.13 billion), including a primary sale of 100 million shares, according to one of the people, who …

Bloomberg Takeaway.com CEO Jitse Groen said it doesn’t make sense to overpay in its bid to gain control of UK rival Just Eat Plc. “I don’t want to be the idiot that runs into a ratio that doesn’t make any sense,” Groen said at the sidelines of the Morgan Stanley European Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in Barcelona. Takeaway published …

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc plans to launch a new supermarket brand distinct from the Whole Foods Market chain the company acquired two years ago, a sign of the retail giant’s hunger for a slice of the grocery market beyond high-end organic food. The company has posted four job listings for “Amazon’s first grocery store” in the Woodland Hills neighbourhood of Los …

Bloomberg Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown may not be selling his company shares anytime soon but that isn’t stopping other executives from cashing out gains after restrictions ended last month. CFO Mark Nelson is the latest executive to sell 70,000 shares for $5.7 million, reducing his stake in Beyond Meat by 16%, according to a filing. Chief People Officer Cari …

Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd logged more than 268 billion yuan ($38.3 billion) of purchases during its Singles’ Day bonanza, exceeding last year’s record haul after a 24-hour shopping marathon. An estimated half-billion shoppers from China to Russia and Argentina swarmed the e-commerce giant’s sites to scoop up everything from Apple Inc and Xiaomi Corp gadgets to Ugandan mangoes. The …

Bloomberg New Jersey Transit issued an urgent appeal for private industry to help transport millions of people annually to a newly opened mega-mall just west of Manhattan. “It can’t take 10 years,” Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, New Jersey’s transportation commissioner and NJ Transit board chairwoman, told a meeting of potential private partners in East Rutherford. “Frankly it can’t take five.” American Dream, …

Bloomberg The owner of Sears and Kmart is closing almost a third of its remaining stores just months after buying the struggling retailer out of bankruptcy. Transform Holdco LLC’s shutdown of 96 locations will leave just 182 outlets for the company, which was once America’s biggest department store chain. The merchant “has faced a difficult retail environment and other challenges” …

Bloomberg No longer the khaki king of the ’90s, Gap Inc has been in need of an overhaul for a very long time — and Art Peck won’t be the one to deliver it after all. Gap fired its chief executive officer after his turnaround efforts failed to reignite sales growth, with disappointing third-quarter performance sending shares plummeting in late …