News

Dallas -- Zale Corp. on Thursday restated its support for Signet Jewelers Ltd.'s $1 billion acquisition offer, urging shareholders to support the deal despite opposition from a large investor. The deal, under which Zale stockholders would receive $21.00 per share in cash, has been unanimously approved by the Zale board of directors.

Zale’s investor TIG Advisors LLC has called the deal "grossly unfair," saying the jewelry retailers should be able to get $28.60 a share in cash and stock.  

By Evan Gold, VP of client services, Planalytics

The winter of 2014 brought record cold and snow throughout North America and its impact on business and consumer spending were widespread and significant. How impactful was it? Well, for the S&P 500 companies, the word “weather” was mentioned in almost 200 earnings calls from January through March, which is a 81% increase compared to last year.

Menomonee Falls, Wis. -- Kohl’s Corp. missed Wall Street expectations for profits, revenue and same-store sales during a difficult first quarter. Net income, which had been expected to rise slightly, fell 15% to $125 million, from $147 million.

In addition, net sales declined 3% to $4.07 billion from $4.2 billion, while analysts had expected them to rise to $4.22 billion. Same-store sales, also expected to increase, fell 3.4%.

Dallas – DGSE Companies Inc. swung to a net loss of $523,000 from a net profit of $300,000 in first quarter 2014. The retailer cited significant decreases in both bullion and scrap sales resulting from a drop in gold prices as affecting its performance, which included a 32% drop in revenue to $19.9 million from $29.2 million.

DSGE has closed 23 stores since February 2014 and expects $3.7 million in non-recurring charges in 2014 as part of discontinued operations.

London – U.K. swimwear and resort retailer Orlebar Brown has deployed NetSuite OneWorld to support its growth and continued global expansion. The company is leveraging NetSuite OneWorld's capabilities for financial consolidation, tax compliance support, and multi-currency and multi-language support point-of-sale (POS), for its Notting Hill store in London, as well as inventory management, order management and warehouse management to run its core mission-critical business processes.

Merrillville, Ind. – Consumer buying club franchisor DrectBuy and eInfochips are collaborating for a business intelligence (BI) collaboration solution that integrates data from warehouse clubs and the DirectBuy e-commerce portal. The solution drives consumer behavior with an enhanced shopping experience, and also enables analytics for data-driven decision making.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Endicia, a provider of e-commerce shipping technology has added an Amazon integration to its shipping software's capabilities. The solution, which allows users to import orders and post-back tracking information, is designed to increase shipping efficiency.

Research Triangle Park, N.C. - Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, is releasing the TCxWave Model A30. This new model brings the design of the original TCxWave model to a smaller frame, allowing retailers with less space for the docked machine access to the capabilities of the original solution.

The TCxWave features a wide touch-screen interface, and is operated by the Intel Celeron Bay Trail quad core processor, supporting Windows 7, POSReady 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Embedded Industry 8.1.

The product will be available starting in July.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores posted disappointing results for its first quarter, with earnings down 5% as harsh winter weather kept shoppers away. The company also gave a weak earnings forecast for its current quarter that fell short of analysts' estimates.

For the period ended April 30, Wal-Mart earned $3.59 billion, compared with $3.78 billion a year ago, less than analysts expected. In addition to the unusually harsh winter weather, a higher-than-expected tax rate also hurt earnings, the retailer said.

Walmart continues to envision flat same store sales at its U.S. stores after reporting weaker than expected profits on weak U.S. sales results that were negatively affected by a winter that wouldn’t end.