On Macy's

GREAT NEWS! Macy's only lost $35 million last quarter instead of $44 million previously. All sarcasm aside, the entire organization is a disaster from it's CEO down to the sales people at every store. The products are tired, the atmosphere is depressing and the shopping experience is discombobulated as there is no flow between sub-departments in department stores for the modern consumer. The idea of tailoring each store to it's surrounding area is a pure pipe dream. These people can't hit the middle of a bell curve if their life depended on it in regards to consumer satisfaction and they are going to make hundreds of different shopping experiences across the country?

The problem with the retail industry and commercial real estate as a whole, is that it is lead by business school droids that base their decisions on motivational books and what Jack Welch wrote about in the 1990s. If you talk with one of their executives, they will pop out a pyramid competency chart (with them on top, go figure!) and talk about the "secrets of success." There is zero creativity and a feeling of entitlement that would make the English royalty proud.

Macy's Loss Narrows; Fourth-Quarter Outlook Falls Short

By Andria Cheng, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Macy's Inc. reported Wednesday a third-quarter loss that narrowed more than expected, helped by its "My Macy's" initiatives to tailor merchandise to local demand and by improved results for its upscale Bloomingdale's chain.

The company /quotes/comstock/13*!m/quotes/nls/m (M 18.28, -1.15, -5.92%) said the results gave it confidence about prospects for the holiday selling season. Still, while management raised full-year sales and profit outlook, its fourth-quarter targets came up short of Wall Street expectations.

Macy's shares dropped 4.3% in pre-market trading.

The loss of $35 million, or 8 cents a share, for the three months ended Oct. 31 compared with a loss of $44 million, or 10 cents a share, in the year-earlier third quarter.

Quarterly sales fell 3.9% to $5.28 billion, with same-store sales decreasing 3.6%. Online sales shot up 21%.

Excluding division-consolidating and other restructuring costs, the company said it would have lost 3 cents a share. Analysts, on average, had estimated Macy's would lose 7 cents a share on sales of $5.28 billion, according to the consensus of estimates compiled by FactSet Research.

Macy's sees fourth-quarter same-store sales to be down 1% to 2% and pegged per-share profit excluding items in a range $1 to $1.05 a share. Analysts' consensus stands at $1.13 a share, according to FactSet.