Us department store Dillard’s reported on Thursday that total retail sales (excluding the company’s construction business) rose 22 per cent to $1.6 billion, while store sales rose 23 per cent from a year earlier.
According to Dillard’s ‘s press release, retail gross margin rose to an all-time high of 47.3% of sales, up from 42.6% a year ago. The strongest categories are men’s wear and accessories, women’s wear and youth clothing.
The company said net income rose 59 per cent year-on-year to $251.1 million.
In recent months, department stores have recovered from difficult years in retail, but most are still struggling to cope with decades of industry-wide decline. However, Dillard’s has always been ahead of this group.
“our customers responded well to our products in the first quarter,” William William Dillard, chief executive, said in a statement.
The company said on Thursday that it had bought back $186.5 million of shares, or about 735000 shares, according to estimates by Zakary Zachary Warring, an equity analyst at CFRA Research, maintaining the overall pace of buying back 10 per cent of outstanding shares each year.
William Dillard said the company received $862 million in cash at the end of the quarter after share buybacks.
“Dillard’s will continue to actively buy back shares and maintain a clean balance sheet and strong cash flow,” Zakary Wallin said in an email comment.
“We like [the company’s] zero balance sheet, small store portfolio (in the southern United States) and shareholders’ return on capital. We see Dillard’s operating at an efficient level, with good management, while other retailers are struggling. “
But the company can’t completely get rid of the reality of department stores.
Dillard’s “may benefit from pent-up demand from fashion categories and low promotions”, according to comments emailed by UBS analysts led by Maurizio Serna on Thursday.
But they also said higher inflation could hamper sales growth in the second half of the year.
“We believe that the combination of slowing sales, cost inflation and increased promotional activity. It will put pressure on Dillard’s ‘s profits, “Serna said.
Costco, a well-known warehouse member store in the United States, announced that comparable sales rose 12.6% in April, while net sales rose 13.9% from a year earlier to $17.33 billion.
Among them, excluding the impact of gasoline prices and foreign exchange changes, total sales can be increased by 8.7%. Comparable e-commerce sales increased by 5.7%, excluding the above impact, an increase of 6.2%.
Due to the change in the date of Easter, the retail month in April this year has one fewer shopping days than last year, and the negative impact on total sales and comparable sales is about 2-2.5%.
Simon Real Estate Group (Simon Property Group) on Monday reported strong leasing and sales in the first quarter, despite the volatility of its market environment and business model.
According to Simon’s press release, as of March 31, the rental rate was 93.3%, up from 90.8% a year ago.
Simon signed more than 900 leases this quarter, covering an area of more than 3 million square feet, and “there are a lot of leases in progress”, David Simon, chief executive, said on a conference call with analysts.
But the company’s monthly rental income accounted for 5.4 per cent of total annual rental income, up from 4.2 per cent a year ago and 1.9 per cent in the previous quarter.
“if we predict pre-epidemic trends, we can infer which categories are still doing well-home and horticulture, health and beauty are still well above our expectations, despite negative year-on-year growth in these categories this month.
The clothing category was roughly in line with our expectations and rebounded after the failure of COVID-19 during the pandemic.
As uncertainty continues to dominate, this reinforces the need for retailers and brands to remain flexible and resilient-listening to the needs of customers.
The focus may now be on price points, necessity, and value to create a great experience and drive other factors to maintain customer loyalty. ” Lucy Gibbs said.