CINCINNATI–Macy’s continues to feel the pain of both its ongoing consolidation and the horrible retail buying environment, although it said the worst may be over on both fronts.
In issuing its first quarter results this morning, Macy’s reported a $255 million pre-tax loss, with just half of that coming from restructuring charges, the rest from operations. This beat Street estimates but is still larger than the quarter loss a year ago.
On the top line, sales dropped 9.5 percent, or 9 percent on a comp-store basis.
Macy’s Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren put a positive take on the numbers, stating, “Our sales were consistent with our initial expectations, while earnings and cash flow performance were better than expected.”
He said he expected the positive results of the company’s restructuring and its My Macy’s program would start to show up in last quarter of this fiscal year and the first quarter of 2010.  For this year, the company is still projecting a six to eight percent sales decline with earnings in the 40 to 55 cents per diluted share range, excluding one-time consolidation costs.
One positive note this quarter was the continuing growth shown by the online unit, which includes both Macys.com and Bloomingdales.com. Online sales were up 16.2 percent for the quarter.