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Victoria’s Secret to close 250 stores, Macy’s warns of $1B quarterly loss

Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands reported a 37% drop in sales in its first-quarter earnings report. Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi joins the On The Move panel to discuss how retailers are faring during the virus outbreak.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Let's talk about some of the retail earnings that we've gotten over the past couple of hours, and we want to invite in Brian Sozzi who covers retail for us. But let's start with Macy's. They are adding to their debt. They're also adding to cash on hand to get through this crisis. What do you take from this, Brian?

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, Adam, this morning that Macy's put out a preliminary update. They may lose over a billion dollars in the first quarter. They haven't even closed the books yet on the quarter. They're still trying to figure out how much money they did, in fact, lose.

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But, overall, CEO-- Macy's CEO Jeff Gennette was on a call with JPMorgan this morning. I was on that call. Very depressing. Here you have a company that is fighting for its survival, and what they tease-- and I'm surprised the stock is not completely being blown up here-- is a large financing round. And it will likely be not only large but also penalizing the bottom line and likely come at a very high interest rate. And that's the last thing I think Macy's needs, but it's the reality of the situation.

JULIE HYMAN: Brian, we also heard from L Brands. We heard from TJX. And it seems as though, you know, like any industry, the companies that were stronger going into this might be stronger coming out, but it might also make some of the weaker players healthier in some ways.

L Brands, for example, is going to close, what? almost a quarter of its stores. And there are some analysts who have said in the past that that would make it a relatively stronger retailer.

BRIAN SOZZI: I would push back on that a little bit. You and I, we've seen for years how retailers have closed stores hands over-- hand over fist, hundreds of stores. And what they do-- what that does is short term, it might improve their profits, but it essentially takes these retailers out of the minds of consumers. You're not driving past Victoria's Secret. You're not driving past an L Brands store. What does that? You get pushed online and you buy your shopping on Amazon, which just speeds up that black vortex and sends companies like L Brands six feet under.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Brian, what about Best Buy? They talk about the fact that they had an increase in sales of appliances and computers, but it was, what? 81% of the sales were in the last six weeks of the quarter, which was as we were going into pandemic shutdown. What does this say about where we head for them in the second quarter and beyond?

BRIAN SOZZI: Tough quarter, no doubt about it, but I think playing off what Julie just said, this type of situation is-- you're seeing clear winners emerge in retail. It's Target. It's Walmart. Of course it's Amazon, but it's also a company like a Best Buy. Same-store sales were down 5.7%, to be expected, but you've seen customers go on to bestbuy.com, buy a lot of products. Their online sales were up significantly.

Most importantly, they are exiting the quarter with close to $4 billion in cash. I'm sure JCPenney would like to have that cash right about now. They don't. Best Buy does. That's why Best Buy wins.