Boston, MA 10/22/2013 (wallstreetpr) – By choosing to retreat from some lackluster business regions, SUPERVALU INC. (NYSE:SVU) has managed to report impressive earnings, exceeded even Wall Street expectations in its Q2.13. But now questions are being asked of whether the supermarket chain has enough gas still left to grow its earnings.
Earlier this year, SVU unloaded more than half of it stores in cost cutting measures. Of course, this has become a common practice in this industry as some of its peers have also been through this cost cutting route.
In Q2.13 reported, SVU posted $40 million in net income, equivalent to $.015 per share for the quarter ending September 7. In the comparable quarter last year (Q2.12), the retail store reported in the red, posting $111 million loss, equivalent to $0.52 per share loss.
In the earnings excluding items, the company realized $0.13 per share, exceeding analysts’ forecast of $0.11 per share on $3.88 billion revenue.
After selling nearly 900 of its units, the retail chain realized a 0.2% growth in sales to earn $3.95 billion. It means that shedding nearly over half of its units has served as a perfect cost cutting strategy.
In the Q2.13, and operating a smaller company, SVU was able to trim its admin and sales expenses to $465 million, indicating a percentile drop of 14%. Following the $3.3 billion assets sales earlier 2013, SVU noted a drop in its interest bill.
And on the operating margin, the supermarket reported 2.8% in Q2.13, against -0.3% in Q2.12.
In the previous trading session Monday, October 21, the $1.90 billion market cap company closed the day negatively, going down $0.08 per share to settle at $7.31. This happened on the day that the company had a very active stock activity which saw more that 10 million of its share traded against daily average of 4.6 million. It remains to be seen just how far the retail store surges after its massive slim down.
