Dive Brief:
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With some help from Saks Global’s bankruptcy, Macy’s Inc.’s Q4 surpassed expectations in most measures. Net sales in the period fell 1.6% year over year to $7.6 billion, with comps up 1.8%. Net income surged nearly 50% to $507 million.
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At Bloomingdale’s, which took share from Saks Global in Q4, net sales rose 8.5% and comps surged 10%. Bluemercury net sales rose 2.5% and comps rose 1.3%.
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At Macy’s, shuttered stores helped drive down net sales by 3.2% as comps rose 0.4%. Minus closures, comps rose 0.6%, and at 125 revamped stores comps rose 0.9%.
Dive Insight:
Macy’s Inc.’s rehabilitation of its namesake banner appears to be hitting its stride, with revamped stores notching growth in seven out of eight quarters. Last month, store improvements — more staff, more brands and “better execution in the store, better storytelling” — began at another 75 Macy’s stores, CEO Tony Spring told analysts Wednesday.
The star of the quarter, though, is Bloomingdale’s, the company’s higher-end department store. Spring led the retailer for nearly a decade before taking the reins at Macy’s Inc. two years ago. He was replaced by former Galeries Lafayette executive Olivier Bron in 2023.
Analysts noted that in Q4 Bloomingdale’s took share from Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, which merged as Saks Global in late 2024, and are now in bankruptcy court after a rough year.
“I feel strong about the opportunity for Bloomingdale's,” Spring said. “The disruption in the marketplace only gives more fuel to the fire.”
Bloomingdale’s may be garnering not just sales and customers from the Saks troubles, but also merchandise. In contrast to the Saks Global stores, which are slowly but surely repairing vendor relationships that soured over many months, Spring said that Bloomingdale’s enjoys “excellent vendor partnerships.”
“The vendor community has rallied around Bloomingdale's like never before,” he said.
But improvements at Bloomingdale’s also fueled the results, which were “the best holiday performance on record” for the retailer, according to GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders.
Outside forces, including tariffs and a thorny consumer environment, are challenging the department store giant and the turnaround at its namesake. Macy’s Inc. gross margin contracted by 50 basis points to 35.2%, with tariffs siphoning 60 basis points.
For this year, Macy’s Inc. expects net sales of $21.4 billion to $21.65 billion, compared to $21.8 billion in 2025, and comps to land between a 0.5% decline and a 0.5% increase.
“Our guidance reflects this tension between how good we feel about our strategy, how good we feel about our team, and the level of uncertainty relative to macro and geopolitical environment,” Spring said. “I feel good about the things that we control.”
The project to close 150 underperforming Macy’s stores is nearing the end, with asset sale gains just $3 million in Q4, down from $41 million the previous year. For 2025, asset sale gains were down by $96 million, reaching $48 million. The company “remains committed to closing underproductive stores,” per its press release Wednesday.
Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tom Edwards told analysts that a review of the fleet is ongoing, though the goal is still to end up with about 350 Macy’s locations.
