Larger Retailers’ 1Q 2014 Profitability

In previous pricing posts, there has been much discussion concerning increasing retail discounting and other forms of increasing pricing pressures.

A critical issue is what the cumulative impact on retail profitability this discounting had in 1Q 2014 results.

A Wall Street Journal Real-Time Economics post of June 16, 2014, titled “Cold Weather Shrinks First-Quarter Retail Profits Despite Sales Gain” discusses the issue of larger retailers’ first quarter profitability.

A couple of excerpts:

After-tax profits for U.S. retailers with more than $50 million in assets fell 11.5% in the first quarter, compared with a year earlier, even as sales grew 3.6%, a Commerce Department report said Monday.

also:

In the first quarter, large retailers recorded a $14.6 billion after-tax profit on $625.9 billion in sales. The decline in first-quarter profits was the largest since 2009, at the tail end of the recession.

The article also discusses reasons for this reduced profitability.

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ProfitabilityIssues.com is published by StratX, LLC (stratxllc.com).  StratX, LLC is a management consulting firm and strategic advisory that focuses on the analysis of current and future business conditions, and given these conditions, offers corporations and businesses advice, strategies, and actionable methods on how to optimally increase revenues and profitability.