mobile shopping

Staples Profit Beats Estimates

Shares of the company, which also reiterated its full-year profit and sales forecasts, rose 4.5 percent in early trading.

Staples outlined plans in September to close 30 stores in North America and 45 stores in Europe.

“These results indicate that Staples’ restructuring plans are stemming the declines in the business,” J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Christopher Horvers wrote in a client note.

Results from smaller rivals Office Depot Inc and OfficeMax Inc last week also showed how they relied on tight cost controls to offset weaker-than-expected sales in the third quarter.

Office supply chains are considered a good gauge of economic health because demand for their products is closely tied to white-collar employment rates.

Staples, whose shares were down 20 percent this year up to Tuesday, plans to tweak its product offering to boost sales as U.S. shoppers are increasingly choosing mobile computing devices such as tablets and e-readers over traditional computers.

“Customers that once only needed paper, ink and toner now need tablets and smartphones and technology accessories. (They) also want the convenience of mobile shopping and fast delivery,” CEO Ronald Sargent said on a post-earnings conference call.

The company is building its online sales and mobile commerce businesses as it tries to fend off competition from online chains such as Amazon.com Inc.

Sales at Staples have suffered as corporate customers and other shoppers cut back on discretionary spending in the weak global economy, forcing the chain to keep a tight lid on costs.

But Staples reported North American delivery sales rose 1 percent in the third quarter even as retail sales remained flat. Overall sales fell about 2 percent to $6.35 billion.

Analysts on average were looking for revenue of $6.45 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Staples’ adjusted profit of 46 cents per share beat estimates by 1 cent per share, although restructuring costs took it to a net loss. The company incurred impairment and restructuring charges of about $840 million in the quarter.

The company posted a net loss of $596.3 million, or 89 cents per share, compared with a profit of $326.4 million, or 47 cents per share, a year earlier.

(Reporting by Ranjita Ganesan, Chris Peters in Bangalore and Dhanya Skariachan in New York; Editing by Don Sebastian, Rodney Joyce and Ted Kerr)

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/11/14/business/14reuters-staples-results.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Bits: Mobile Shopping Set to Spike, Says Forrester

The retail industry is itching to sell products on mobile phones; it’s just waiting for consumers to start buying. Already, 25 of the 30 top online retailers have iPhone apps, even though less than 15 percent of online consumers report having used their mobile phones to buy something.

But Forrester Research predicts that a boom will come. Mobile commerce is expected to reach $31 billion by 2016, up from $3 billion in 2010, according to a forecast the firm published Friday. But even with such rapid growth, mobile shopping is expected to make up only about 7 percent of e-commerce by 2016. That amounts to about 1 percent of total retail sales.

Several things are holding people back from using their phones to shop, according to Forrester. At the top on the list are concerns about security. These concerns may fade in the same way that they stopped being a barrier to online shopping. But there are also technical barriers — mobile sites are often slow and unwieldy – and confusion among retailers about how best to pursue their mobile strategies.

Over 90 percent of online retailers have mobile strategies, according to a recent survey conducted by Shop.org for Forrester, but the report characterizes the vision of many retailers as “immature.” For now, companies are using mobile primarily to offer information about the products they sell or to give basic information about their stores. But there are more ambitious plans in the works.

Among those most often cited by retailers are enabling customers to use their phones to pay at check out, share ratings and reviews, and receive notices about sales and other offers.

Putting the focus on consumers may be misguided, said Sucharita Mulpuru, the author of the report. Rather than hope that shoppers will use their phones to buy things, she said retailers should focus on training store employees to use mobile devices in ways that would make them more helpful. Several retailers, like Home Depot and Urban Outfitters, have already indicated that they will do so, but they are a relatively small minority, the report says.

“While the opportunity to arm store associates with instantaneous information and richer payment acceptance capabilities may be the most compelling reason for retailers to invest in mobile, most companies view mobile as a channel that is primarily about completing sales through a mobile site,” Ms. Mulpuru writes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1fc84017edd23a35c839d6f22f0fa12a

Staples Profit Beats Estimates

Bits: Mobile Shopping Set to Spike, Says Forrester

Recent News

Partners