Financials - Web sales grow while total sales shrink for Children’s Place

E-commerce revenue for the second quarter increased 30.2% to $22.0 million. In contrast, total sales and comparable-store sales declined 6.6% and 9%, respectively.

Mark Brohan

Research Director

The web now accounts for a larger percentage of total sales at The Children’s Place Retail Stores Inc.

For the second quarter ended Aug. 1, Children’s Place, No. 149 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, reported:

Web sales for the second quarter increased 30.2% to $22.0 million from $16.9 million in Q2 of 2008.
Total sales decreased year over year 6.6% to $315.7 million from $338 million.
Comparable-store sales declined 9%.
The web accounted for 7% of total revenue, compared with 5% in the prior year.
Net loss was $7 million compared with net income of $11,000 in the previous year. The net loss included certain expenses related to discontinued operations, the retailer says.

"Second quarter 2009 financial results were pressured by the economic environment and the negative impact of foreign exchange. In addition, we faced a challenging comparison as last year`s second quarter was the best in the company`s history," says interim CEO Chuck Crovitz. "Despite these headwinds, we were pleased to have made significant progress on various initiatives including further growth in our e-commerce business, acceleration of our cost-cutting efforts and the successful rollout of a new value-engineered store format.”

For the first two quarters: