Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 1, 1993 TAG: 9309010068
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From staff and wire reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The company said Tuesday, however, that it has not decided which stores will be affected. It did say it intends to open more than 300 stores this year and remodel another 250.
The Columbus, Ohio, retailer, which already operates several stores in Western Virginia, has said it intended to open a Structure men's store later this year at Valley View Mall.
The Limited also operates Limited, Express, Lerner, Lane Bryant, Victoria's Secret, Limited Too, Abercrombie & Fitch, Henri Bendel, Bath & Body Works, Cacique and Penhaligon's. It has 4,481 stores.
The company said in a release that it will use a portion of the proceeds from selling a 60 percent interest in Bryland Division to offset a $200 million pretax charge to "accelerate" the updating and closing of stores.
Bryland distributes apparel through the Lane Bryant Direct, Roaman's and Lerner Direct catalogs. The Limited got $285 million cash and will get a $203 million pretax gain from the sale of part of Bryland to an affiliate of Freeman Spogli & Co., a Los Angeles-based merchant banker.
The Limited also said it had re-evaluated the earnings and sales potential of some Limited, Lerner and Henri Bendel stores and other assets, and would record a charge against earnings to reduce their value to "an amount considered realizable in future periods."
The Limited said it plans to buy back as much as $500 million worth of its stock as market conditions warrant.
"Going forward, we believe this effort will bear fruit as we emphasize our best-performing stores and shed those assets that do not perform to our expectations and standards," said Kenneth B. Gilman, Limited's vice chairman.
Analyst Jennifer Black Groves of Black & Co. in Portland, Ore., said Limited expects its square footage to increase about 7 percent this year instead of the 10 percent increase it had projected. She expected most of the new space to be given to fledgling businesses such as Limited Too, which sells girls' clothes, and Bath & Body Works, a toiletries and cosmetics business.
To some extent, the company's success has been its problem as well. The Limited lost many of its fashion-conscious younger customers to Express, another of its divisions, and has never quite succeeded in repositioning itself as a specialty store catering to career women.
Lerner New York, once the specialty store of choice for women seeking inexpensive clothes to wear to the office, has tried with little success to reach out to shoppers with higher disposable incomes.
Structure, a young-men's store, also took sales from the older divisions.
Staff writer Sandra Brown Kelly contributed to this story.
by CNB