Lowe's Companies Inc. Mooresville, N.C., the world's second largest home improvement retailer, today reported net earnings of $344 million for the quarter ended October 30, 2009, a 29.5 percent decline from the same period a year ago. Sales for the quarter declined 3.0 percent to $11.4 billion, down from $11.7 billion in the third quarter of 2008. For the nine months ended October 30, 2009, sales declined 3.1 percent to $37.1 billion. During the quarter, Lowe's opened 12 stores and closed one store.
"The broad-based pressures of the macro environment are clearly evident in our sales as consumers continue to delay large purchases until they feel better about the economic outlook," said Robert A. Niblock, Lowe's chairman and CEO. "While consumer spending remained weak, we were pleased with our sequential improvement in comparable store sales from the second quarter and continued evidence of solid market share gains. Those gains, combined with sound execution, led to earnings within our guidance for the quarter.
"We are beginning to see signs of improved performance in some of the hardest-hit housing markets including California, Florida and areas of the desert Southwest," Niblock added. "As the economy and the housing market continue through the bottoming and recovery process, we know there will be ongoing macroeconomic challenges, including declining home values and rising unemployment. However, we are encouraged by the signs of stabilization in our business and remain confident we are well positioned to capture additional market share."
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Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.