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Macy’s slashed its full-year earnings and sales outlook.
The department store operator beat fiscal first-quarter earnings estimates but missed on revenue.
Shares of Macy’s dropped as much as 10% in premarket trading.

The Macy’s company signage is seen at the Herald Square store on March 02, 2023 in New York City. 
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Macy’s shares fell Thursday, as the retailer slashed its full-year outlook and said it saw sales significantly weaken in late March.
The company’s stock dropped as much as 10% in premarket trading even as it beat fiscal first-quarter earnings expectations.

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The department store operator said it now expects sales of $22.8 billion to $23.2 billion for the year, down from a previous range of $23.7 billion to $24.2 billion. Macy’s anticipates comparable owned-plus-licensed sales will fall 6% to 7.5% during the period, worse than its previous outlook of a 2% to 4% decline.
For the year, it expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.70 to $3.20 — a major reduction from the previous $3.67 to $4.11 a share guidance.
In an interview with CNBC, CEO Jeff Gennette said the retailer took a conservative stance for the rest of the year after seeing a spring pullback. He said the company anticipates more markdowns of seasonal products and plans to reduce merchandise orders as it prepares for the coming quarters.
Weaker sales cut across Macy’s brands, including higher-end Bloomingdale’s and beauty chain Bluemercury, he said.
Here’s how Macy’s did for the three-month period that ended April 29 compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 56 cents adjusted vs. 45 cents expected
Revenue: $4.98 billion vs. $5.04 billion expected

First-quarter net income for Macy’s was $155 million, or 56 cents per share, compared with $286 million, or 98 cents per share, a year earlier.
Revenue fell about 7% to $4.98 billion from $5.35 billion in the year-ago period. Sales missed analysts’ forecast.
Comparable sales on an owned-plus-licensed basis dropped 7.2% for the quarter, worse than the 4.7% drop expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.
The Macy’s brand saw the steepest year-over-year declines. Its comparable sales fell 7.9% on an owned-plus-licensed basis. At Bloomingdale’s, comparable sales on an owned-plus-licensed basis fell 4.3%. Bluemercury’s comparable sales grew 4.3% year over year, but growth was slower than the double-digit or high single-digit increases it has put up in other quarters.
Gennette said Macy’s sales have gotten hit as customers’ budgets are squeezed. About half of customers for Macy’s namesake brand have a household income of $75,000 or less.
“They clearly are under pressure, and particularly in our discretionary categories,” he said.
At Bloomingdale’s, he said, the “aspirational customer” who shopped more luxury brands during the Covid pandemic when they had stimulus money has dropped off, too.
Cooler weather also hurt sales, as shoppers held off on buying seasonal items, he added.
But Gennette said the company did see “signs of life in the month of May” as the weather turned warmer. He said spring apparel sales saw an uptick, especially at Bloomingdale’s. The higher-end department store’s sales are ahead of last May, he said.
Beauty has been among the company’s strongest categories. Some of the popular pandemic items, such as textiles and housewares, are starting to bounce back, too.
As Macy’s braces for a potentially tougher year, Gennette said it has a new reason for customers to visit in the fall and over the holidays. Starting in October, Nike will return to its stores and website. Macy’s got its last delivery from Nike in December 2021, as the athletic footwear company cut back on wholesale orders and emphasized direct-to-consumer sales.
Macy’s has carried some Nike footwear through a licensing partnership with Finish Line, but it will start to get a fuller assortment, including apparel for women, men and kids.
“We took a pause in our partnership, and we’re now back in it,” he said.
Shares of Macy’s closed Wednesday at $13.59, bringing the company’s market value to $3.69 billion. So far this year, the company’s stock is down 34%. That lags behind the nearly 9% gains of the S&P 500 and approximately 6% loss of the retail-focused XRT during the same period. More

A clear majority of Americans who don’t identify as LGBTQ+ believe companies should publicly support the community, according to a new survey from gay rights organization GLAAD.
Three out of 4 survey respondents said they feel comfortable seeing LGBTQ people in advertisements.
The study comes as retailers like Target, Kohl’s and PetSmart have come under attack for their annual LGBTQ Pride merchandise displays and ad campaigns.

10’000 Hours | DigitalVision | Getty Images

A clear majority of Americans who don’t identify as LGBTQ+ believe companies should publicly support the community, according to a new survey from gay rights organization GLAAD.
About 70% of more than 2,500 adults who don’t identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or an otherwise member of the community said support from companies should come through hiring practices, advertising and sponsorships, according to online responses to GLAAD’s annual “Accelerating Acceptance study,” conducted in February.

“When people are exposed to LGBTQ people and experiences in media it changes hearts and minds and shifts culture and sentiment,” GLAAD said in its release. “Measuring comfortability in media is a pathway to 100% acceptance for LGBTQ people.”
Three out of 4 survey respondents said they feel comfortable seeing LGBTQ people in advertisements, and almost 70% reported feeling comfortable seeing an LGBTQ family with children included in ads.
The study comes as retailers like Target, Kohl’s and PetSmart have come under attack for their annual LGBTQ Pride merchandise displays and ad campaigns.
Mega retailer Target went as far as to pull some of its merchandise from the retail floor last week. A spokesperson for the company said threats to employees were “impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”
Critics continue to incite anti-LGBTQ attacks in stores and on social media, with some calling for boycotts.

In April, Bud Light came under fire after partnering with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The campaign prompted violent videos of customers shooting cans of Bud Light and a right-wing boycott. In response, the marketing executive who oversaw the partnership at Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch Inbev took a leave of absence.
Sales of Bud Light since then continue to suffer, according to data by Evercore ISI. In the week ended May 20, Bud Light sales volume — the number of units of beer sold — declined 29.5% compared with the same period last year.
The company has also faced criticism from LGBTQ+ leaders who have dinged the company for not defending its ties with Mulvaney and the community more strongly.
In a statement responding to the backlash, Anheuser Busch said it “works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics.”
GLAAD and more than 100 leading LGBTQ advocacy organizations wrote a letter on Wednesday calling on Target to “reject and speak out against anti-LGBTQ+ extremism going into Pride Month,” which is celebrated in June.
“Doubling down on your values is not only the right thing to do,” the group wrote in a statement. “It’s good for business.” 
A separate survey conducted by GLAAD and the Edelman Trust Institute in December found that if a brand publicly supports and demonstrates a commitment to expanding and protecting LGBTQ+ rights, Americans are twice as likely to buy or use the brand.
GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis emphasized in her personal call to action on Twitter last week that companies need to stand behind their products and ad campaigns instead of backing down.
“Anti-LGBTQ violence and hate should not be winning in America,” said Ellis. “But it will continue to until corporate leaders step up as heroes for their LGBTQ employees and consumers and do not cave to fringe activists calling for censorship.” More

IF AUSTRALIA AND Canada were one economy, this “Ozanada” would be the world’s fifth-largest, bigger than India and just behind Germany. Considering the two in tandem is not as nutty as it seems. Weather aside, they have a remarkable amount in common. Both are vast land masses populated by comparatively few people and dangerous wildlife. Both are (mostly) English-speaking realms of King Charles III. Both export their rich natural resources around the planet. And both are magnets for immigration.Their worlds of business, too, are near-identical. Macquarie, an Australian financial group, is the world’s largest infrastructure-investment manager. Brookfield, a Canadian peer, is the runner-up. Fittingly, Australia has produced a number of top surf-clothing labels, just as Canada has developed a niche in parkas and other winterwear. And, of course, both are home to commodities giants. But the main thread that connects Ozanada Inc is less fetching. As Rod Sims, former head of Australia’s competition watchdog puts it, his country’s firms have “forgotten how to compete”. So have their Canadian counterparts.Many hands have been wrung in recent years over oligopolies in America. Yet next to Ozanada, the world’s largest economy looks like a paragon of perfect competition. Coles and Woolworths, Australia’s biggest supermarkets, sell 59% of its groceries, according to GlobalData, a research firm. Loblaws and Sobeys peddle 34% of Canada’s—more than the combined share of the top four grocers in America. In both Australia and Canada the four biggest banks hold three-quarters of domestic deposits, compared with less than half in America. In both countries domestic aviation is a duopoly and telecoms a triopoly. The list goes on.Part of the explanation for Ozanada’s oligopolistic tendencies is benign. If companies need to be of a certain scale to be economically viable—to afford the necessary investments in computer systems, for example—then a small economy may be unable to support more than a few players in many industries. Ozanadian national champions, notably its grocers and lenders, are, however, meaningfully more profitable than their American counterparts. That points to other, less innocent causes. Toothless antitrust regimes in both countries set a high bar for blocking mergers, permitting consolidation. A lack of openness to foreign investment doesn’t help. Of the 38 members of the OECD, only three—Iceland, Mexico and New Zealand—are less open to foreign investment. Stringent screening, ownership caps and various other hurdles make setting up shop in Ozanada a hassle for foreigners. In 2013 Naguib Sawiris, an Egyptian telecoms tycoon, swore he would never again invest in Canada after his bid to acquire the fibre-optic network of Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS), a Canadian carrier, was rejected by the government with little explanation. Four years later MTS was purchased in its entirety by Bell Canada, a local rival.All this may reflect a unique Ozanadian spin on the “resource curse” that has brought political instability and underdevelopment to commodity-rich countries in Africa and South America. Ozanada’s natural bounty has weakened its incentive to build globally competitive industries in other areas. That may explain why, beyond commodities and outdoor apparel, the list of successful Ozanadian multinationals is so short. Canada’s banks have dipped a toe in America, but remain small fry. Its life insurers have fared only a bit better south of the border, mostly thanks to big acquisitions. Vegemite, a divisive Australian spread, has yet to win over foreign sandwich-eaters.Ozanada Inc’s limitations are particularly acute at the cutting edge of technology. Products deemed “high-tech” by the World Bank, such as computers and drugs, represent more than 7% of the combined exports of OECD members, but only 4% for Canada and less than 2% for Australia. Patents granted per 10,000 people are a mere 5.9 in Canada and 6.7 in Australia, compared with 9.9 in America and 28.2 in South Korea. This is not for want of well-nourished brains; Ozanada is home to world-class universities and boasts some of the highest rates of tertiary education in the OECD. Rather, the problem is an underfed innovation system. Spending on research and development comes to just 1.7% and 1.8% of GDP in Canada and Australia, respectively, against an OECD average of 2.7%. Total venture-capital investment in Ozanada was a mere $16bn in 2022, roughly half the level in Britain. Atlassian and Canva, two Australian technology successes, and Shopify, a Canadian one, have not prompted a lot of fresh prospecting for the next generation of tech winners.Dormant animal spiritsTo Ozanadians, this may all seem academic. After all, among citizens of countries with at least 20m inhabitants, only America’s are richer. But they used to be better off than Americans: after soaring in the first decade of the 2000s thanks to rising commodity prices, their GDP per person briefly surpassed America’s in the early 2010s in dollar terms. And a fate tethered to demand for commodities may prove particularly volatile in the decades to come. Canada, with its reliance on oil and gas exports, could be dragged down by decarbonisation. Australia will be somewhat insulated by its vast deposits of copper and other minerals needed for the green transition. But it could suffer from its dependence on shipping commodities to China. In 2020 China began introducing restrictions on Australian coal, timber and other products, seemingly in retaliation for calls by Australia’s then government for an inquiry into the origins of covid-19. Australia weathered those restrictions, which have since been loosened, surprisingly well. A long-term slowdown in China’s economic growth, though, which many economists now expect, would weigh heavily on the country. Ozanada’s economic model is not about to collapse. In time, though, its corporate weaknesses may come back to bite it. ■Read more from Schumpeter, our columnist on global business:Why tech giants want to strangle AI with red tape (May 25th)America’s culture wars threaten its single market (May 18th)Writers on strike beware: Hollywood has changed for ever (May 10th)Also: If you want to write directly to Schumpeter, email him at [email protected]. And here is an explanation of how the Schumpeter column got its name. More

GO FIRST, an Indian low-cost airline, collapsed in May under the weight of four years of losses, citations for safety lapses and operating confusion that, in January, resulted in a flight from Bangalore to Delhi carrying baggage but forgetting a third of its passengers. At least the carrier held valuable assets in the form of 45 or so aircraft stranded at Indian airports. And, as a high-priority case, it was supposedly subject to expedited bankruptcy hearings. A prompt liquidation and redeployment of assets has obvious benefits for the aviation industry, its creditors and, possibly, for rivals keen to snap up its planes to add capacity in response to packed flights. Not so fast, the court hearing Go First’s case now appears to be saying. Rather than allow easily identifiable assets like the company’s aeroplanes to be reclaimed while more complicated financial ones are unwound, it has placed a blanket hold on all the airline’s assets. The Go First roadblocks are indicative of longstanding problems with bankruptcy in India. These were meant to be solved by a new insolvency code introduced in 2016. That code’s provisions shifted power from indebted companies, protected by a morass of earlier rules, to their creditors. It allowed some interminable bankruptcy proceedings at last to come to an end, for example forcing the sale of Essar Steel, an industrial giant which had been in default to various creditors as far back as 2002. A smooth journey through the court system was meant to send a bigger message—that the risk of lending to Indian businesses could be mitigated by ensuring that collateral is readily transferable. This, the argument went, would help reduce borrowing costs for corporate India more broadly. Despite a few successes such as Essar, however, the regime has not lived up to its promise. One persistent problem has been the low recovery rate for creditors’ claims. In the past seven years lenders to a company that presented a successful resolution plan received a paltry 32% of their claims, on average. And only one in four bankrupt firms present such a plan; the remaining three-quarters of cases end in liquidation, for which creditors’ average recovery rate is a dismal 7% of what they are owed. The official figures may overstate the actual returns of what creditors are owed. They take no account of the time and effort involved in the process—the second problem with the code as applied in practice. Under the law, cases are to be resolved within 330 days. The latest quarterly update by the law’s administrator, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, indicated that cases leading to a liquidation took an average of 456 days to conclude. The average for cases in which the company survived through a resolution plan was a gobsmacking 614 days. The number of applications that are taking more than two years rose to 85 in the 12 months to March 2022, from 15 a year before. Bankruptcy lawyers grumble that submitting an application in the first place is becoming harder, and can itself now take a couple of years. Fixing India’s bankruptcy process may require revisions to the law. It could, for instance, do with a clearer distinction between tangible and less tangible assets of the sort that has historically allowed things like railway carriages to be repossessed quickly and leased out in jurisdictions such as America. The bankruptcy system also needs more resources. As the number of cases keeps rising, so does the backlog (see chart). Unlike India’s older courts, often ensconced in palatial buildings, the country’s busiest bankruptcy forum in Mumbai occupies an upper floor of a dilapidated old building owned by MTNL, an ailing state-owned telecoms provider. In theory, its five courtrooms operate six hours a day. Lawyers say that in practice four hours is more common. Without enough judges to man all five benches, some courtrooms remain empty. As an exasperated banker involved in many insolvencies puts it, “No one is winning now.” ■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Since the launch in November of ChatGPT, an artificially intelligent conversationalist, AI is seemingly all anyone can talk about. Corporate bosses, too, cannot shut up about it. So far in the latest quarterly results season, executives at a record 110 companies in the S&P 500 index have brought up AI in their earnings calls. ■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

A recent piece of research revealed that as many as one in five people in Britain suffers from “misophonia”, a condition in which certain sounds cause them disproportionate distress. If you can listen to your spouse eating an apple and don’t immediately want a divorce, you are not a sufferer of misophonia. But you may have another, similar condition for which the workplace is the perfect breeding-ground. “Misergonia” (colloquial shorthand: desk rage) is the name hereby bestowed on the eye-gougingly deep irritation triggered by certain aspects of office life. Like misophonia, sounds are often the trigger for misergonia. The routine fire-alarm test is a case in point. “Attention please, attention please,” shouts a voice that is literally impossible to ignore. “This is a test,” it roars, making it clear that your attention is not in fact required. More shouting and eardrum-piercing noises follow. Then, most galling of all, a message of thanks for your attention, the aural equivalent of a prison thanking you for choosing them for a stay. By the end of it all, a conflagration would be sweet release. Other noises are less obviously intrusive but just as annoying. The noise of clicking keys is the soundtrack of cubicles everywhere. But every office has its share of keyboard thumpers, people whose goal seems to be not producing a document but destroying the equipment before one can be created. Verbal tics are another tripwire for misergonia sufferers. “This is a point that has already been made,” is how weirdly large numbers of people start to make a point that has already been made. Why not just say “I don’t value your time” and have done with it? Small IT failures are a fact of office life, but they can still be soul-destroying. The printer which jams repeatedly. The design requirement in said printer that demands every flap and tray must be opened once before things can restart. The headphones that never work. Or the mouse that gives up at just the wrong moment. Your cursor is two centimetres from the unmute button on a Zoom call; you move your mouse towards it when it is your turn to speak, and nothing happens. You rattle it around more vigorously, and still no response. Either your cursor is in a coma or the battery has run out. “You’re still on mute,” offers up a colleague helpfully. Someone else fills the gap. “This is a point that has already been made…,” they begin. And then there is the reply-all email. It starts innocently enough, with someone asking for help with a problem. In come one or two replies, and with a sickening lurch of the stomach you realise that the entire company has been copied in on this request. Suddenly, an avalanche. It is as if nothing else matters other than weighing in on this one question. Deadlines are deferred. Milk goes off in the fridge. Visitors in reception are left to forage for food while members of staff devote themselves to the matter at hand. There are replies to replies, and replies to replies to replies. This isn’t a thread, it’s a hawser. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves hugely. But there is a silent, suffering group for whom every new message lands as a hammer blow to their composure. How many minutes can one organisation fritter away on this nonsense? Why isn’t it stopping? And when the initial round of answers has died down, can you be certain that it is really over? It is always possible that someone who has been away from their desk will pile in and start the whole farrago up again. Individual workers will have their own triggers, ostensibly tiny things to which they are extremely sensitive. It might be the person who still doesn’t understand you have to tag someone in Slack to notify them of a message. It might be the doors closing on a crowded lift, only for an arm to snake in and a voice to ask “room for one more?” (If you were the size of a marmot, yes.) It might be a particularly heavy tread or an even heavier perfume. It might be the way someone insists on using the word “pivot”. It might be anything, frankly—which means that for some of your colleagues it might also be you. There is no cure for misergonia. The workplace is a collection of people in enforced and repeated proximity, their habits, noises and idiosyncrasies turning into something familiar for some colleagues and disproportionately grating for others. The only release is to go home, close the front door behind you and find your significant other tucking into an apple.■Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:Why are corporate retreats so extravagant? (May 25th)Businesses’ bottleneck bane (May 18th)How to recruit with softer skills in mind (May 11th)Also: How the Bartleby column got its name More

Hermès is a byword for exclusivity. Its signature Birkin bag, one of which sold for $450,000 last year, cannot be bought from the luxury firm’s website or by simply walking into a store. There are neither ads in fashion magazines nor glossy campaigns on Instagram. For the not-so-famous, owning a Birkin can involve a years-long waiting list.Part of the reason for the wait is constrained supply, which Hermès manages with the precision worthy of its stitching. But another part is booming demand for all manner of luxury goodies. Last year net profits of Kering, which owns fashion labels such as Gucci and Balenciaga, rose by 14%. Those at LVMH, owner of Tiffany and Louis Vuitton, among other brands, grew by nearly a quarter. Hermès and Richemont, which owns Cartier, among other baubles, each saw theirs surge by more than a third. Together, the four groups raked in over €33bn ($35bn) in profits, on combined revenues of around $130bn.That, though, was before persistent inflation and rising interest rates to combat it fanned fears of a global recession. Now, as those fears intensify, luxury brands are losing their shine, at least in the eyes of investors. Luxury bosses’ unease More

IN THE MARKET for corporate counsel, building is more common than buying. Shelling out for a bullpen of bankers or lawyers is often more costly than poaching a rival’s star performers. So if mergers are, like second marriages, a triumph of hope over experience, then the advisers who put them together really should know better when it comes to their own family. Though their clients are announcing tie-ups at the slowest pace in a decade, in recent weeks the corporate consiglieri have struck a flurry of deals among themselves. Three big transactions illustrate how they may be fooling themselves.On May 21st Allen & Overy, one of London’s elite “magic circle” of law firms, announced a tie-up with Shearman & Sterling, a prestigious Wall Street “white shoe” practice. The merger will create a transatlantic giant with annual revenues exceeding $3bn. Especially for the British partner, though, it may end in heartache. Shearman has struggled to keep up with competitors and has haemorrhaged partners in recent years; in March it abandoned a tie-up with Hogan Lovells, another big firm. As well as staving off the threats of dealmakers departing amid a period of thin corporate activity, the joint firm’s bosses must prove that the marriage is one of convenience rather than desperation. The second deal looks no less fraught. On May 22nd Mizuho, a Japanese banking giant, said it was acquiring Greenhill for $550m. The sale concludes a stagnant decade at the boutique American investment bank, founded in 1996 by Robert Greenhill, a former Morgan Stanley banker. With its share price down by more than 90% from its peak in 2009, the house of Greenhill is in a shoddy shape. That does not necessarily make trying to repair it a good idea.This is not the first Japanese foray onto Wall Street. During the global financial crisis of 2007-09, Mitsubishi UFJ purchased its 22% stake in Morgan Stanley and Nomura acquired Lehman Brothers’ European investment-banking operations. In April this year Sumitomo Mitsui, another big Japanese bank, announced that it would increase its stake in Jefferies, a medium-sized investment bank it first put money into two years ago, from 5% to 15%. The results have been mixed: Mitsubishi’s bet paid off handsomely; Nomura’s did not. For Sumitomo, the jury is out.Mizuho’s first task will be to avert an exodus. Unlike machines in a factory, white-collar workers are not nailed to the floor. Bankers are not usually given to pangs of loyalty when they receive offers of more money elsewhere. Boutiques, which typically lure star dealmakers with the promise of a bigger slice of their fees, are particularly sensitive to well-connected dealmakers leaving, especially if they take their clients with them—Greenhill’s ten highest-paying customers made up 38% of revenues in 2022. There is little reason to think Mizuho, a firm with little presence on Wall Street, can resuscitate Greenhill’s powers.The third transaction heaps another challenge on top of employee retention. After pruning its investment bank in recent years, on April 28th Deutsche Bank announced a deal to buy Numis, a British investment-banking firm, for £410m ($515m). The German lender has bought the ear of British bosses before—in 1989 it acquired Morgan Grenfell, one of London’s most illustrious merchant banks. Numis is less grand, but acts as corporate broker to around one in five large listed British firms, a service which involves offering regular market-facing advice to bosses in the hope of landing better-paid dealmaking contracts down the line.Deutsche Bank’s move looks like a contrarian bet on British listings—possibly too contrarian. The received wisdom today is that London’s stockmarket is in decline. British bosses regularly moan that they could achieve higher valuations elsewhere. Arm, Britain’s most important chipmaker, is expected to list its shares in America. Maybe Deutsche Bank is counting on a wave of buy-outs by foreign firms to turn it into the auctioneer of Britain’s corporate silver. But that business would at best be transient, and Numis looks dear. The German buyer is paying the equivalent of £1.7m for each of Numis’s front-office staff, more than twice the annual revenue each employee has generated since 2020. If only it could demand a prenup. ■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More