Macy’s Inc

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    Macy’s Signals a Rocky Year Ahead as Trade War Looms

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    The largest department store chain in the U.S., like other retailers recently, warned that consumers may be more cautious with their money in the months ahead.Macy’s, the largest department store in the United States, saw slightly improved sales across all of its stores during the holiday season, but like other retailers it warned of a potentially rocky year ahead. Macy’s said comparable sales at stores that it owns were down 1.1 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Feb. 1. Across all of Macy’s nameplates, which include Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, as well as its licensed business and online marketplace, sales rose 0.2 percent, the best result in many quarters.Macy’s entered the holiday season facing tough challenges, including more cost-conscious consumers, weakening profitability and a bizarre accounting error. It is in the midst of a turnaround plan that includes closing underperforming locations and improving its remaining stores with more staffing and better merchandise. It has closed about 66 of 150 planned stores so far. While Macy’s sees signs of optimism, the forecast it offered Wall Street showed that it expects to bring in less revenue than it did last fiscal year, in part because of the store closures. The retailer said it expects net sales to be $21 to $21.4 billion, down from the $22.3 billion this past year. It expects comparable sales to fall as much as 2 percent.David Swartz, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, cautioned that investors and analysts like himself “need to see more” in order to be convinced that the department store’s strategy to reverse its fortunes is really working.“When you own hundreds of stores, some of them are going to be really good and some of them in the middle and some of them are terrible,” he said, adding that “the fact that the better stores are performing fairly well does not really tell you that much about the health of the whole company, unfortunately.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Millions Line Sidewalks and Tune In

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      There will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.As the 98th iteration of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade makes its way down Central Park West and to the heart of Herald Square, there will be all the old familiars: Snoopy overhead, Tom Turkey kicking things off and, of course, the Taylor Swift of Thanksgiving, Santa Claus, bringing up the rear.But there will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.Changes introduced by the new company, Silent House, will include more cameras trained on the spectators lining the parade route, according to a spokeswoman.There will also be cameras from the parade itself, circulating among the 700 clowns, 11 marching bands and the thousands of volunteer balloon handlers, who will keep icons like the new Minnie Mouse balloon from flying away.The spokeswoman for Silent House — which produced the halftime performance of this year’s Super Bowl — said its aim was to make the expected 30 million people watching on screens feel as if they’re standing and cheering alongside the 3.5 million or so people watching in person.Just before start time on Thursday morning, a group of star-shaped sugar cookies and human jingle bells stepped off a coach bus on Columbus Avenue and 77th Street, headed into position. Groups of people were gathered around the knees of a new Spider-Man balloon, and cheers were going up among the balloon handlers as they made ready to hit the parade route.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Macy’s Discovers Employee Hid Millions in Delivery Expenses

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      The department store chain said it had found the erroneous accounting entries while preparing its results for the third quarter.Macy’s said Monday that an employee had misstated up to $154 million in delivery expenses over the past few years, forcing the retailer to delay a much-anticipated earnings report that Wall Street uses to gauge the strength of holiday shopping.The department store chain rushed to release an abridged set of financial results, which were a mixed bag, with signs of weakness and pockets of strength.Macy’s shares fell by more than 8 percent in premarket trading after the surprise preliminary report. But it quickly pared back some of its losses, as investors tried to make sense of the mixed results along with the company’s reassurance that the employee error did not affect its cash flow management or vendor payments.Macy’s sales in the third quarter fell 2.4 percent — below analysts’ expectations — to $4.74 billion. The company’s overall sales were dragged down by weak sales at Macy’s stores and its digital business.But comparable sales at 50 locations that represent the company’s future — based on geography, staffing and other factors — rose 1.9 percent, the third consecutive quarter of growth. And comparable sales rose at both Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, the company’s luxury brands. Those results are early signs that Macy’s latest strategy of investing in these parts of the business may be working.Macy’s said it had found the accounting error while preparing its results for the quarter, which ended Nov. 2. The results had been set to be released on Tuesday. An investigation was opened and the employee was no longer with the company, Macy’s said. The investigation has not identified involvement by any other employee.In the same time period of the accounting issue in which the employee hid up to $154 million, the retailer said it had incurred about $4.36 billion of delivery expenses. Macy’s declined to comment further.The chain said it would report earnings by Dec. 11.As part of a turnaround plan announced in February, Macy’s said it would close 150 of its stores over the next three years. The company said it had recorded asset gains of $66 million from the sale of closed stores. That was more than the company had expected.Macy’s decision to delay its full-year guidance added to uncertainty about winners and losers in the upcoming holiday shopping season. U.S. consumers are still spending, but executives at some of the biggest retailers, including Target, have recently flagged consumers’ continuing cautious spending patterns, with many shoppers trading down to lower-priced items. The National Retail Federation projected U.S. holiday sales to grow as much as 3.5 percent this year, in line with averages before the pandemic. More

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      Will A.I. Boost Productivity? Companies Sure Hope So.

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      Wendy’s ordering kiosks. Ben & Jerry’s grocery store freezers. Abercrombie & Fitch’s marketing. Many mainstays of the American customer experience are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence.The question is whether the technology will actually make companies more efficient.Rapid productivity improvement is the dream for both companies and economic policymakers. If output per hour holds steady, firms must either sacrifice profits or raise prices to pay for wage increases or investment projects. But when firms figure out how to produce more per working hour, it means that they can maintain or expand profits even as they pay or invest more. Economies experiencing productivity booms can experience rapid wage gains and quick growth without as much risk of rapid inflation.But many economists and officials seem dubious that A.I. — especially generative A.I., which is still in its infancy — has spread enough to show up in productivity data already.Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, recently suggested that A.I. “may” have the potential to increase productivity growth, “but probably not in the short run.” John C. Williams, president of the New York Fed, has made similar remarks, specifically citing the work of the Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon.Mr. Gordon has argued that new technologies in recent years, while important, have probably not been transformative enough to give a lasting lift to productivity growth.“The enthusiasm about large language models and ChatGPT has gone a bit overboard,” he said in an interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Activist Investor’s Group Raises Bid for Macy’s

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      The new offer values the department store chain at $6.6 billion. Macy’s, which just announced a strategy to turn around its business, said it would “carefully review” the proposal.The activist investor group that is seeking to buy Macy’s increased the pressure on the department store chain on Sunday, raising its offer and disclosing additional details about its financing plans.Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management said in a news release that they were now offering $24 per share, valuing the retailer at $6.6 billion. The new offer is up from the $21 a share they last put forward and a 33.3 percent premium to Macy’s closing share price of at $18.01 on Friday.Arkhouse and Brigade named additional investors they had brought on as equity partners, Fortress Investment Group and One Investment Management. Arkhouse and Brigade also said, in an apparent response to Macy’s questions about its financing, that they had “identified large global institutional financing sources” that “represent 100 percent of the capital required to buy the shares in Macy’s we do not already own.”The retailer has been facing pressure from the investor group since December, when the group submitted a bid that would take Macy’s private at a value of $5.8 billion. Arkhouse said that unless the retailer began sharing nonpublic information, it might take its offer to shareholders. The investor has since nominated nine people to Macy’s board.Macy’s on Sunday said it would “carefully review and evaluate” the latest proposal.“The Macy’s Inc. board has a proven track record of evaluating a broad range of options to create shareholder value, is open-minded about the best path to achieve this objective and is committed to continuing to take actions that it believes are in the best interests of the company and all Macy’s Inc. shareholders,” the company said in a statement.The retailer has been trying to stay focused on its own strategy for turning around the business.Last week, Macy’s announced a strategy that would vastly change the makeup of the company. It said it would close 150 of its namesake stores over the course of three years, while also opening more locations of Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, its upscale chains.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More