Corporate Governance

The Woodlands, Texas -- Conn’s Inc. on Tuesday reported a bigger-than-expected 44% decrease in its fourth-quarter profit amid ongoing problems with its credit-financing business. The retailer said it is exploring a sale of all or a portion of its loan portfolio and will stop selling video game products, digital cameras and certain tablets. It also said it remains on track to open 15 to 18 stores this year.

For the fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, Conn’s reported a profit of $15.5 million, down from $27.7 million in the year-ago period.

By Carin van Vuuren, Usablenet

If there was ever any doubt of mobile’s essential role to retail success, the most recent holiday shopping season should put that to bed. Last year, more than 40% of all Cyber Monday sales came from mobile devices. In fact, Amazon stated that almost 60% of its customers shopped via mobile during the 2014 holiday season, with total U.S. sales from its app doubling from 2013.

Eden Prairie, Minn. – Supervalu Inc. wants customers to be able to stack some coin. The grocery retailer has added Cummins Allison’s Money Machine 2 self-service coin counters across multiple store locations in Maryland, Missouri, Illinois and Virginia.

Supervalu selected the new Money Machine 2 coin counters because of their flexibility. Additionally, Cummins Allison provided Supervalu with opportunities to increase their coin redemption revenue without increasing user fees.

Ongoing problems with its credit-financing business led Conn's to post a large decrease in profits for the fourth quarter.

Overall, for the fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, Conn’s reported a profit of $15.5 million, or 42 cents a share, compared with a profit of $27.7 million, or 75 cents a share, a year earlier.

Boca Raton, Fla. – A second request for information from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will reportedly not slow down the pending merger of Staples and Office Depot. According to the South Florida Business Journal, the FTC has requested unspecified additional documents and information from Office Depot.

Books-A-Million continued to benefit from a spike in book sales and the popularity of Minecraft and Disney’s “Frozen” in the fourth quarter, as same store sales and profit increased.

The chain posted a profit of $3.5 million in the year ended Jan. 31 compared to a net loss of $7.6 million in 2013. Same store sales increased 0.4% in the year and rose 1.7% in the fourth quarter when total sales rose 1.8% and net income increased 0.8% at Books-A-Million over the previous year with sales hitting $474 million.

Armonk, N.Y. – The weather is traditionally a topic for conversation when there is nothing else to discuss, but for retailers knowing what the weather will be is a vital concern. IBM and The Weather Company, parent company of the Weather Channel, are partnering to integrate real-time weather insights into business to improve operational performance and decision-making.

New York -- Europe's largest home improvement retailer, Kingfisher, plans to close about 60 underperforming B&Q stores in Britain amid a 7.5% decrease in annual profit, Reuters reported.

Currently, B&Q operates some 360 stores.

In other news, Kevin O'Byrne, CEO for B&Q U.K. and Ireland, will leave the company on May 15, the report said.