With the holiday shopping season in full swing, Kohl’s Corp. reported Nov. 25 that sales were down 2.8%, continuing the company’s streak of negative quarterly sales.
However the decrease is not as large as some analysts expected, and Kohl’s has raised its 2025 financial outlook. The stock price jumped during early morning trading on Wall Street, up more than 30% and surpassing $20 per share for the first time since October 2024.
The stock price closed at $22.42 per share, up 42% for the day.
The company was expecting a sales decrease of 5-7% for the year, it now expects net sales decrease of 3.5-4%.
The quarterly results come a day after the company named Michael Bender permanent CEO of Kohl’s. Bender had been serving as interim-CEO since May after Ashley Buchanan was fired for cause in April.
“While we’re encouraged with the progressive improvement we’re making, we want to acknowledge that this performance is not representative of where we aspire to be,” Bender said in a call with analysts on Nov. 25. “We continue to operate in an environment where customers are increasingly choiceful as their discretionary income becomes pressured.”
For the quarter, Kohl’s had a profit of $8 million, down from $22 million at this time last year.
Focus on gifting, impulse paying off for Kohl’s
Kohl’s has already made efforts to tap into shoppers who start holiday gifting early by launching their Black Friday early access sale on Nov. 7.
The push toward gifting has paid off for Kohl’s this year. Bender said the combination of Sephora, impulse gifting and jewelry delivered positive results.
Throughout Kohl’s stores there are displays for gifts, as the company leans more heavily into gifting and impulse purchases.
Bender said it has grown the Sephora business by nearly $2 billion in the four years since the partnership started; the company completed adding 613 impulse queuing lines to grow gifting 40%; and jewelry has grown 10% since the company made an effort to bring it back.
“In accessories, excluding Sephora, we’ve seen three consecutive quarters of positive sales growth driven by initiatives like jewelry and impulse,” Bender said.
Toys will be a key gifting category for Kohl’s this holiday season as it carries products like Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Nerf.
“This year we’re also seeing great engagement with our trading card offering like Pokémon,” Bender said.
And Kohl’s is continuing to add brands to be Kohl’s Cash eligible after the company excluded too many brands for too long.
“After excluding a growing number of brands, our promotions became less impactful to our customers over recent years. This ultimately created unnecessary friction within our shopping experience particularly with our Kohl’s card customers,” Bender said. “Following the initial success of brand inclusion, we made the decision to add a second wave of brands into the coupon in late August. The second wave was smaller as it included roughly 50 brands that are more digitally native.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kohl’s reports 2.8% quarterly sales decrease, improved outlook
Reporting by Ricardo Torres, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
