Macy's reports 20% fall in comparable sales, eyes surging virus cases

Macy's Inc reported a more than 20% drop in quarterly comparable on Thursday and said it expects that to continue into the fall season, signaling a tough holiday season for the coronavirus-battered department store chain.

The retailer's shares fell 3% in premarket trading. Its stock has lost nearly half its value in a tumultuous year in which it has had to lay off thousands of workers and suffer through plunging sales due to outlet closures.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
M	MACY'S INC.	16.29	+1.23	+8.17%

Macy's Chief Executive Officer Jeff Gennette said the company was keeping an eye on a new wave of COVID-19 cases across the United States and the potential impact on its business.

The country has been regularly recording over 100,000 daily COVID-19 infections over the last two weeks, raising fears that the spiking numbers will keep people away from already sales-battered retail stores heading into the holidays.

Macy's said it expects its comparable sales of owned and licensed stores to fall by a low- to mid-20s percentage in the fall season.

Net sales fell to $3.99 billion from $5.17 billion in the third quarter ended Oct. 31, but beat analysts' estimates of $3.86 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

The company posted an adjusted net loss of $60 million, or 19 cents per share, compared with earnings of $21 million, or 7 cents per share, a year earlier.

Analysts had expected a loss of 79 cents per share.

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(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)