This Massive Discount Retailer Is Now Closing 1,000 Stores

March 13, 2024

This massive discount retailer is now closing 1,000 stores as inflation pressures the company to shutter several locations.

Dollar Tree Inc. plans to close a whopping 600 of its Family Dollar stores during the first half of the year, the company said Wednesday.

The retailer also intends to close an additional 370 Family Dollar stores and 30 Dollar Tree stores in the coming years as leases expire, CEO Rick Dreiling said during an earnings call.

Consolidated net sales for the fourth quarter rose 12% to $8.6 billion from $7.7 billion year over year.

Quarterly net sales at the company’s namesake banner rose 15% to nearly $5 billion, up from $4.3 billion a year earlier.

Family Dollar net sales rose 7% to $3.7 from $3.4 billion.

Overall, the company posted a net loss of $1.7 billion for Q4.

For the full year, consolidated net sales rose 8% to $30.6 billion from $28.3 billion a year earlier.

However, the company swung to a net loss of $998 million from a prior year profit of $1.62 billion.

Overall same-store sales increased 4.6%.

By banner, Dollar Tree’s comps rose nearly 6%, while Family Dollar’s comps grew 3.2%.

Dollar Tree said in November that it planned to review its Family Dollar portfolio and identify underperforming stores for closure, relocation, or re-bannering.

The Virginia-based company, which had 16,774 stores in the U.S. and Canada as of last month, publicly shared the outcome of its review for the first time Wednesday.

Dreiling said persistent inflation and reduced government benefits continue to pressure the lower-income consumers that comprise a sizeable portion of Family Dollar’s customer base.

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Also Read: A Massive Grocery Store Will Now Close All Locations

Other Economy News Today

A leading tech company is now cutting a whopping 8,000 jobs, part of a plan to increase its AI output, sources confirm.

IBM told employees on Tuesday in its marketing and communications division that it is slashing the size of its staff, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Jonathan Adashek, IBM’s chief communications officer, made the announcement in a roughly seven-minute meeting with staffers in the unit, said the person, who asked not to be named because the news hasn’t been made public, reports CNBC.

In December, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC that the company was “massively upskilling all of our employees on AI,” after it announced a plan in August to replace nearly 8,000 jobs with AI.

IBM said on its earnings call in January of last year that it was cutting 3,900 positions.

“In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single digit percentage of IBM’s global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with,” IBM told CNBC in a statement.

The latest cuts come alongside another round of downsizing in the tech industry.

So far this year, some 204 tech companies have cut almost 50,000 jobs, according to the website Layoffs.fyi.

January was the busiest month for tech layoffs since March, as Alphabet, Amazon and Unity all announced massive job cuts.

IBM has returned to growth in the past couple years, but expansion remains muted, says CNBC.

“Revenue in the fourth quarter increased 4% from a year earlier even as earnings topped estimates. CFO James Kavanaugh spoke of workforce rebalancing on the earnings call.”

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Also Read: A Massive Mall Retailer Is Now Closing in California

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