Corporate Governance

An unknown donor brought holiday cheer to some Walmart customers in Pennsylvania.     A mystery person under the name "Santa B" paid off $46,265.59 in layaway items at Walmart’s store in Everett, Pennsylvania, CNBC reported. The amount covered the balances on 149 layaway accounts.    

Retailers are doing a good job online when it comes to sales, but they are failing when it comes protecting sensitive shopper data.   All of the nation’s largest retailers had multiple issues with domain security, which increases the risk of hackers impersonating a retailer's site and falsifying a checkout form to obtain a user's credit card information, according to a report by security rating firm SecurityScoreboard that exposes cybersecurity vulnerabilities across 48 of the biggest U.S holiday retailers. 

A Florida-based supermarket company tops J.D. Power’s 2016 U.S. Pharmacy Study.   Publix Pharmacy, the in-store pharmacy at Publix Super Markets, came out on top in the J.D. Power report, a customer satisfaction benchmark study that provides pharmacy-specific performance comparisons among brick-and-mortar pharmacies.  

Hudson’s Bay Co. is bullish on robotics.   

Restoration Hardware reported better-than-expected earnings and sales for the third quarter, but the upscale home furnishings retailer cut its full-year outlook amid slow sales of its holiday collection.    The company also said that its name will change in January to RH, which is the same as its stock ticker.   Restoration Hardware reported net income of $2.5 million. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, were 19 cents per share.  

Fred’s acknowledged it had a tough fiscal third quarter, but the company is making many changes and looking forward to a brighter future.      The first action Fred’s will take will be closing 40 underperforming stores in the first half of 2017, which  provides an immediate benefit to earnings of more $4 million.  

The nation’s largest maternity clothing retailer failed to meet sales and earnings expectations in the third quarter amid changes designed to focus on its core operations.     Destination Maternity reported a net loss of $1.5 million in its fiscal third quarter.   On a per-share basis, the company said it had a loss of 11 cents. Losses, adjusted for non-recurring costs, were 9 cents per share.   

Among the retail strategies employed by Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores to turn around its business, the store-within-a-store concept might rank as the most inventive.   Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores have been cropping up inside existing Ace locations around the country (and in some cases, built from the ground up as a combo store).   The latest example of this is taking place in Santa Paula, California, inside the Heritage Ace Hardware located at 568 Suite C West Main Street.