Target Corporation reported that its net sales for the five weeks ended July 4 were $5.69 billion, a decrease of 2.6% from $5.84 billion a year ago. On this same-store basis, June comps decreased 6.2%.
“Sales for the month of June continued to reflect a very challenging economic environment. Consistent with our first quarter experience, however, we continue to mitigate the impact of a substantial portion of this sales shortfall on our profitability through better than expected gross margin rate and continued expense discipline in our retail segment. Separately, we continue to enjoy the benefit of modestly improving risk trends in our credit card segment. As a result, we expect our second quarter EPS performance to meet or exceed the current median FirstCall estimate of 64 cents,” said Gregg Steinhafel, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Target Corporation.
In the year-to-date period, comps were down 4.7%. Net sales dipped 0.8% to $24.5 billion.
