Columbus, Ohio — Despite being under a sales agreement with an affiliate of Nexus Capital Management and having filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Big Lots, a Top 50 retailer, is still scheduled to announce its second quarter earnings on September 12.
The discounter postponed its second quarter earnings last week; they were originally supposed to be released on September 6.
Bruce Thorn, President and CEO of Big Lots, stated that the company’s quarterly results were in line with expectations in the press statement announcing the selling deal.
“We are happy to have achieved underlying comp sales, gross margin, and operating expenses in line with our guidance, despite a challenging consumer environment and financial pressures facing our business,” he stated. “On a year-over-year basis, underlying comp sales increased sequentially compared to Q1, and gross margins increased significantly, partly due to the advancement of our five major initiatives, especially by expanding our extreme value offerings.
Furthermore, Q3 is off to a strong start thus far, with underlying gross margin growth from the previous year and a notable sequential improvement in underlying comp sales compared to Q2. We anticipate that the encouraging trend will extend throughout the second half of the year.
Big Lots further disclosed that it has received notification from the New York Stock Exchange stating that it does not adhere to Section 802.01C of the NYSE Listed Company Manual due to the fact that for a consecutive 30-day trading period, the average closing price of the company’s common shares was less than $1. The company’s common shares are not immediately delisted from the NYSE as a result of the notice.
