June Mostly Gloomy for Retailers

Several major retailers, including J.C. Penney Co. and Target Corp., shaved their second-quarter earnings outlook Thursday as they reported slow sales growth in June, their second-most-important month.

The belated arrival of warm weather in some parts of the country at the end of June helped drive sales of air conditioners and bathing suits, but it came too late to save retailers already hampered by a slow economy.

Unusually wet weather in some regions, particularly the Northeast in May and early June, forced heavy discounting of slow-moving merchandise to fuel sales.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported a 2.7% same-store sales gain that was below analysts’ forecasts of 3%.

Department stores continued to struggle, but there were some bright spots.

San Francisco-based Gap Inc. again impressed Wall Street with a gain of 10%, besting analysts’ projections of 7.8%, as it digs out from more than two years of disappointments.

Neiman Marcus Group Inc. also reported a double-digit increase at stores open at least a year that well exceeded analysts’ estimates.

Sales at stores open at least a year, also known as same-store sales, are considered the best indicator of a retailer’s health.

“The results were modest, though we are slowly starting to see a bit more improvement. But it is not great,” said Michael P. Niemira, vice president of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi’s same-store sales tally of 78 stores was up 2.4% for June, slightly better than the 2% gain Niemira expected. That compares with a 5.1% gain in the year-earlier period.

He expects same-store sales to rise 2.5% to 3.5% in July, when stores begin to ship back-to-school merchandise.

June is the second-most-important month in a retailer’s sales calendar, behind December, accounting for 10.2% of annual revenue last year. It is the last chance for retailers to get rid of spring merchandise while also selling summer goods before making room for back-to-school merchandise.

But as Richard Jaffe, an analyst at UBS Warburg Securities, put it, “Inventories were inflated, and demand was low.”

Target said same-store sales increased 0.8%, in line with the 0.6% increase forecast by Wall Street. At J.C. Penney, same-store sales were up 0.1%, in line with the 0.4% analysts projected.

At Federated Department Stores Inc., same-store results slipped 2%.

Kohl’s Corp., a hybrid of a discounter and a department store, had a 2.4% same-store sales decrease.