Department Store

New York -- J.C. Penney CEO-designee Marvin Ellison, who officially takes over on Aug. 1, outlined three key areas the company will focus on in the coming months in a presentation on Wednesday at the Piper Jaffray conference, The Street reported.  

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Saks Off 5th helped its parent, Hudson’s Bay Co., increase same store sales in the first quarter, although the company did report a larger loss.

HBC reported that for the first quarter ended May 2, same store sales increased 2.7%. The company posted a loss of $44 million, compared with a profit of C$176 million, or 97 Canadian cents, a year earlier. Adjusted to exclude restructuring and other items, the loss was C$33 million, up from a comparable C$27 million loss a year earlier. Sales rose 11.7 percent to C$2.07 billion.

Target is doubling the amount of its share buyback authorization from $5 billion to $10 billion and boosting its quarterly dividend by 7.7%, confirming the contents of a statement it published inadvertently and took off its website earlier on Tuesday.

Seattle -- Nordstrom announced plans to open a full-line store in a new open-air retail promenade to be built by Caruso Affiliated, in Carlsbad, California.

The 124,000-sq.-ft. store is scheduled to open fall 2018 and will be the fifth Nordstrom full-line store in the greater San Diego area. The company opened its first Nordstrom in San Diego at Fashion Valley in 1981.

Menomonee Falls, Wis. – Kohl’s Department Stores will bring Apple Pay to customers in all Kohl’s stores nationwide this fall. Kohl’s will also be among the first retailers to integrate both its Kohl’s Charge private credit card as a form of payment as well as its successful Yes2You Rewards loyalty program within Apple Pay.

New York -- Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th will open a store at Christiana Fashion Center in Christiana, Delaware, in October. The 32,000 –sq.-ft. store will be the off-price retailer’s first in the state of Delaware.

Simon is expanding the hugely successful Sawgrass Mills outlet and entertainment center in Florida by adding a new, full-price component.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – Sears Holding Group Inc. has filed a $1.57 billion subscription rights offering with the SEC for its real estate investment trust (REIT) known as Seritage Growth Properties. The offering would give Sears shareholders the right to buy up to 53.3 million shares of the REIT at a share price of $29.58.

Seritage also plans to sell 9.5 million class C non-voting shares to Fairholme Capital Management LLC, Sears’ second-largest shareholder, at the same price. This would give Fairholme a roughly 12% stake in Seritage.