Home Depot

Home Depot’s Craig Menear, EVP merchandising, shared details and data from a first quarter that saw double-digit comps in certain seasonal product categories.

Overall, Home Depot saw comp-store sales increase 5.8% in the first quarter of strong sales and earnings growth.

ATLANTA — Warm weather and demand for core products helped drive up sales and earnings at The Home Depot during its fiscal first quarter. The company reported sales of $17.8 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2012, a 5.9% increase from the first quarter of fiscal 2011. Comparable-store sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 were positive 5.8%, and comp sales for U.S. stores were positive 6.1%.

There was an increase in the number of circulars retailers released in the month of April, while page counts increased only slightly.

JCPenney on Thursday named Ken Hannah as its new CFO in the latest of a series of senior level personnel moves designed to aid in the company’s transformation.

Dallas -- J. C. Penney Co. said that Ken Hannah has been named CFO, effective May 7.

Hannah, who brings over 20 years of finance, operations and audit experience from a wide range of leading companies that include General Electric, Boeing and The Home Depot, has spent the last six years at MEMC Electronic Materials, where he served as president of solar energy, responsible for improving process discipline, simplifying the organization and reducing cost to drive growth in the company's solar business

Kansas City, Mo. -- Irvine, Calif.-based Passco Cos. announced it has completed the acquisition of Shoppes at Coronado Place I, a 14,534-sq.-ft. strip center in Blue Springs, Mo., two miles from downtown Kansas City.

The purchase price was $4.3 million.

The property is across the street from a Wal-Mart, Home Depot and the new 600,000-sq.-ft. Adams Dairy Landing power center, anchored by Target.

Relocating a business and a family from Memphis, Tenn., to St. Petersburg, Fla., is a short distance in miles, but for The Sembler Co., which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the journey has been much longer.

“We have developed 350 projects, including 125 or 130 shopping centers,” said Mel Sembler, recently named chairman emeritus. “It’s been an interesting career.”

In March there was a decline in the number of circulars overall, however, pages per flyer increased. The increase in pages was primarily due to a significant increase in Walmart and Toys"R"Us page counts. Much of the promotional activity was driven by Easter falling earlier in April as compared to 2011.

Walmart distributed an additional four-page flyer in the week of 3/11/2012; they also circulated two flyers instead one in most of the markets in the week of 3/4/2012. These additional flyers accounted for the increase total pages as compared with last year.