Alan McCollough
Alan McCollough
base charges circuit city earnings overall performance remain sales trends
We remain dissatisfied in the overall sales performance of our Circuit City business, ... no new trends on which to base any charges in earnings expectations." ()
advantage believe christmas customers express gifts guaranteed pickup shop web
We believe our guaranteed express pickup offering, which enabled customers to shop for Christmas gifts over the Web through Christmas Eve, was a competitive advantage during the month." ()
additional advertising building circuit city continued dollar expense flat gain held higher investment labor level leverage model optimize quarter relatively retail sales since stores team view work
We view the additional advertising expense during the quarter as an important investment in building the Circuit City brand. Since our retail stores team held labor expense relatively flat on a dollar basis, we were able to gain significant leverage on our higher level of sales as we continued work to optimize the labor model in our stores." ()
obviously overall sales
We were obviously dissatisfied with the overall comparable-store sales decline,
average base believe broader circuit consumers continued december drive exposing increase performance reflects sales store ticket update
We believe the December sales performance reflects not only our continued need to update the store base, but also a need to increase the average ticket and to drive more traffic, exposing a broader base of consumers to the new Circuit City,
available believe best both circuit city convenient customers gives options site tight web
With Circuit City's E-superstore, customers will find convenient and money-saving options not available from Web-only retailers, ... We believe the tight integration of the Circuit City Web site and our superstores gives the customer the best of both worlds." ()
affected although appliance business disruption exit including modest partial product related sales since virtually
Although we had anticipated modest sales disruption related to our exit from the appliance business and the partial remodel of all stores, since the end of September, sales have softened significantly in virtually all product categories, including those not affected by the remodeling process," ()
associates average compared december drive effective evidence further great helped improved increase integrated inventory levels offering offset prior record reduction results sales size strong throughout ticket tightly work
Our record December sales results are further evidence of the great work being done by Associates throughout our company. More effective advertising, improved inventory in-stock levels and a tightly integrated multi-channel offering helped drive the year-over-year improvement. A strong increase in the average ticket size more than offset a reduction in traffic, compared with the prior year." ()
believe consumer events impact near reflects results seen understand war
Near term, we have seen a softening in our business, coincident with the onset of the war with Iraq. We believe the softening reflects consumer preoccupation with geopolitical events. It is too early, however, to understand the impact these events may have on results for the first quarter." ()
digital dvd industry portable resulted sales satellite strong systems trends
The industry trends and our own initiatives resulted in strong sales of new technologies such as digital and thin-panel televisions, portable DVD players, digital satellite systems and portable digital audio,
although december full improvement level offset picked relatively sales strong traffic
Although December sales started relatively strong and picked up at the end of the month, we were not able to offset mid-month weakness, ... For the full month, traffic was up slightly, but not at the level of improvement we experienced in November.
ahead comparable early exceeding final growth outlook sales slightly stores
The first-quarter comparable stores sales growth was slightly ahead of our expectations, with sales exceeding our outlook early in the quarter, but softening during the final month." ()