Retail

Bloomberg Canadian retailers ended their strongest year in two decades on a down note, with a disappointing Christmas shopping season pulling back sales in December. Receipts fell 0.8 percent to C$49.6 billion in January of 2017, Statistics Canada reported. It was the biggest monthly decline since March 2016. Economists were expecting no change during the month. For all of 2017, ...

Bloomberg Walmart Inc.’s battle with Amazon.com Inc. is hitting its bottom line like never before—and testing the patience of investors. The retail giant’s push to expand online operations and cut prices contributed to a record-low operating margin last quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The profit measure narrowed to 3.3 percent, sparking concerns that Walmart’s long-enviable financial cushion is ...

Bloomberg Yum! Brands Inc.’s KFC warned that a supply-chain breakdown that has shut more than half of its 900 UK outlets would persist for the rest of the week, continuing to deprive fans of their fried-chicken fix. KFC said it’s working with new logistical partner Deutsche Post AG to solve a problem that began over the weekend, leaving only 430 ...

Bloomberg Home Depot Inc. sales got another shot in the arm from the US housing boom last quarter, with an extra boost from hurricane-recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and Southern states. A push by Americans to fix up their properties—using money generated by rising home values—helped lift the retailer’s same-store sales by 7.5 percent. That beat analysts’ prediction of 6.5 ...

Bloomberg Grocer Albertsons Cos. plans to buy drugstore owner Rite Aid Corp. in a deal that would accelerate the remaking of the US retail and health-care industries. Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons plans to acquire the parts of Rite Aid that are left over after a separate sale of nearly 2,000 stores, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the companies’ chief executive ...

Bloomberg Nautica, the apparel line known for its ’90s-era panache, is looking for a new owner to steer the ship. VF Corp., the clothing giant that also owns North Face, Vans and Wrangler, announced that it was scrapping Nautica from its portfolio. The company reclassified the business as “discontinued operations” last quarter, though it hopes to find a buyer for ...

Bloomberg Swiss watch exports kicked off 2018 with the strongest growth in more than five years, buoyed by strong demand for high-end timepieces in Asia and a later Chinese New Year. Shipments rose 13 percent to 1.6 billion francs ($1.7 billion) in January, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry said. That’s the biggest jump since October 2012 and the ...

Bloomberg State-controlled VTB Group is buying 29 percent of Magnit PJSC from billionaire Sergey Galitskiy, who said investors don’t trust his vision for Russia’s second-largest food retailer after its share price plunged in the past year. Galitskiy will quit as chief executive officer after selling $2.5 billion of shares to VTB, Magnit said in a regulatory filing. Galitskiy said he ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump “feels strongly” that the US should permit collection of state and local sales taxes on purchases made over the internet, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. Mnuchin, speaking at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, said he has spoken with Trump about the issue, and that the president “does feel strongly” that state and ...

Bloomberg A surge in US apparel costs helped fuel above-forecast inflation for January, sending Treasury yields higher. But the era of markdowns for struggling retailers is far from over. Clothing prices, which account for 3 percent of the consumer price index, jumped 1.7 percent in the biggest monthly gain since 1990, Labor Department data showed. That helped the so-called core ...