Data & Analytics

Higher average selling prices and increased volume helped the nation’s largest egg producer report record sales for its first quarter.

Homeland Stores, a 78-store regional supermarket chain headquartered in Oklahoma City, has launched a mobile payments pilot program with mobile payments technology provider DoubleBeam. Homeland's SwiftScan mobile application allows customers to pay for purchases with a smartphone.

SwiftScan is currently accepted for payment at 20 Homeland locations, with plans to add 26 more locations by the end of October.

OfficeMax EVP and chief digital officer Jim Barr has been elected to Shop.org’s board of directors for a two-year term.

Shop.org, the digital arm of the National Retail Federation, is the world's leading community for digital retail, offering thought leadership through original research and gold standard events. The community's exclusive networking groups and committees lead the global conversation surrounding innovative e-commerce trends and digital retail.

Saks Off 5th has launched its online store, saksoff5th.com. It joins a list of closeout retailers that are getting comfortable in the e-commerce market. The online store will offer up to 55% off merchandise year-round.

The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) is forecasting a 3.4% sales increase for the traditional November-December holiday period from last year — which spells good news for retailers. 

ICSC also anticipates that the other two measures of U.S. industry holiday sales — shopping-center inclined sales +3.4%, and chain-store sales +2.0 — will both increase over last year.

New York -- David Kenny, chairman and CEO of Weather Company, parent company of The Weather Channel, has joined the Best Buy board of directors.

Kenny, who joined The Weather Company in January 2012, previously served as president of Akamai, a cloud platform.

Plano, Texas – Shares of J.C. Penney Company took a beating on Friday after the retailer priced its $932 million share sale at a 7.4% discount and detailed its shrinking cash position.  

Penney priced its sale of 84 million shares at $9.65, down from a closing price of $10.42 on Thursday.

The new offering should raise more than $800 million. According to Reuters, J.C. Penney, which is valued at $2.6 billion, had been considering issuing new stock shares as well as other unspecified alternatives.

Indianapolis – The Finish Line posted increases in net income, net sales and same-store sales during the second quarter of fiscal 2013. Net income totaled $26.19 million, up 6.1% from about $24.44 million a year earlier.

Consolidated net sales were $436 million, up 13.3 % from $385 million in the same quarter the previous year. Same-store sales rose 0.9%.

Cincinnati -- The Kroger Co. today announced its inaugural listing on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index-North America.

The Dow Jones Sustainability Index-North America tracks the economic, environmental and social sustainability performance of the top 20% of the 600 largest North America-based companies in the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index.

Oak Brook, Ill. -- McDonald’s Corporation is partnering with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, founded by the Clinton Foundation and American Heart Association, to increase customers’ access to fruit and vegetables and help customers make informed choices in the nutritional value of their orders.