Finance & Capital Management

Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant, Dressbarn and Justice, may have just reported same store sales growth across all its formats and achieved Thanksgiving weekend sales objectives, but president and CEO David Jaffe remains cautious in his outlook for the remainder of the holiday season.

As so many other retailers have noted in recent weeks, Jaffe said this year’s highly competitive, promotional and compressed holiday season makes it difficult to know how the next few weeks will play out, despite the company’s recent performance.

 Chicago -- When compared to “Black Weekend” last year, brick-and-mortar retail sales between Thanksgiving and Sunday, Dec. 1 increased 1% as shoppers spent an estimated total of $22.2 billion across the four days. However, retail shopper traffic decreased by 4%, to an estimated 1.8 billion store visits, according to new data from ShopperTrak.

Same store sales increased 10.1% during November at J.C. Penney, the company announced during an update on its holiday performance.

In addition to the double digit comp performance, J.C. Penney said its e-commerce sales through jcp.com continued to be strong, running well ahead of last year, consistent with last month's trend.

Plano, Texas  -- J. C. Penney said that its same-store sales rose 10.1% for the fiscal month ending November 30, 2013.  The retailer's stock was up 4.6% to $10.57 percent in after-hours trading Tuesday.

Greek Yogurt leader Chobani hired 18-year Procter & Gamble finance executive Dipak Golechha to serve at its CFO reporting to founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya.

Golechha replaces former Chobani CFO James McConeghy who stepped down in November, the company said. His successor Golechha spent the past 18 years in finance roles at P&G including CFO of the company’s global snacks division.

Seattle – Starbucks has priced an underwritten public offering of senior notes. The company plans to use the net proceeds from the offering of $400 million of 0.875% senior notes due 2016 and $350 million of 2.000% senior notes due 2018 to fund a portion of the payment required by the previously announced arbitration award in the Kraft litigation matter.

Suffern, N.Y. – Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant and Justice, reported net income of $52.6 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, a 22% increase from $43.1 million a year earlier.

Net sales totaled roughly $1.2 billion, a 5% increase from about $1.14 billion.

Leading global beauty company Coty has appointed Patrice de Talhouët as CFO. He will replace Sergio Pedreiro who will stay on at Coty through March 2014 to provide a seamless transition for de Talhouët, as well as to complete Coty's fiscal 2014 second quarter earnings release.