Oct. sales up for Pier 1, Havertys, Bombay
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, November 10, 2003
Fort Worth, Texas — Three big publicly held furniture retailers reported sales gains in October, and two of them, Pier 1 Imports and The Bombay Company, raised their earnings guidance.
Atlanta-based Havertys reported the biggest same-store sales gain at 8.3% and said its total revenues in October rose 10% to $64.8 million. For the year to date, same-store sales were up 0.2% and total sales grew 5.2% to $604.2 million.
Clarence Smith, president and chief executive officer, noted that October was the fifth consecutive month of positive sales comparisons.
"October's category leaders for increased sales over last year were bedding, recliners and formal dining," he said. "Sales of Havertys Collections continued to increase as a portion of the furniture sales mix. Our average dollar sales transaction and average price per item for the month continued to be modestly above last year's figures."
Havertys Collections is the store's in-house brand of mostly imported products.
Fort Worth-based Pier 1 said its same-store gain of 1.6% beat the company's projection of flat to down 3%. The retailer raised earnings projections for its third quarter, which ends Nov. 30, to a range of 33 cents to 35 cents per share from earlier guidance of 28 cents to 33 cents.
Marvin Girouard, chairman and CEO, said traffic and conversion rates in October were flat with a year ago but the average ticket was higher.
Bombay, also based in Fort Worth, said its 5% same-store gain in the October period was on top of a 17% gain in October 2002. The company revised its third-quarter earnings guidance to a loss of 1 cent to 2 cents, from a loss of 3 cents to 6 cents.
"This quarter demonstrated our ability to annualize last year's strong sales results," said James Carreker, chairman and CEO. "For the month and the quarter, all parts of the country and Canada reported positive same-store sales gains. Furniture sales led the way with the strongest increase compared to last year."
| Retailers report October sales | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dollar amounts in millions | |||
| CompanySalesChangeSame-store change | |||
| 1. For the four weeks ended Nov. 1. | |||
| Pier 1 Imports1 | $142.9 | 9.3% | 1.6% |
| Havertys | 64.8 | 10.0% | 8.3% |
| The Bombay Company1 | 44.4 | 12.0% | 5.0% |
