Last year, the company closed 130 stores in rural areas primarily in the Midwest for a savings of about $44 million, Joe Cooper, Big Lots' senior vice president and chief financial officer said during a presentation at the SunTrust Robinson Humphrey 35th Annual Institutional Investor Conference in Atlanta. The closings will help the company realign its focus on stronger markets in California, Florida, the northeast and the northwest that will produce better sales numbers and profitability.
The company, which operates 1,400 stores in 47 states, also has identified between $30 million and $35 million in cost-cutting opportunities that will reduce expenses across the entire organization.
"We need to improve the model; we need to improve the performance," Cooper said of the firm's newly developed strategy, appropriately called WIN or What's Important Now.
That strategy will focus on three prime components: the Discovery Phase which will center on improving the firm's real estate holdings; merchandising and operating expenses; and the testing and final execution of those strategies. Cooper said that strategy should improve gross margins, generate significant cash flow and turn around the sluggish performance the company has experienced in the past few years.
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