Foot Locker closes 56 stores as it swings to loss in Q1
Foot Locker enacted a series of global store closures in the first quarter ended May 3, 2025, as it swung into a loss amid declining sales. The company, which earlier this month announced it was to be acquired by US sports retailer Dick's Sporting Goods, said that it closed 56 stores over the reported period.
These included locations in South Korea, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Greece and Romania. Notably, for the latter two regions, Foot Locker sold its licensed operations to its licensing partner in April 2025.
The closures fell alongside the opening of nine new stores, as well as the remodel and relocation of 11 stores, with a further 69 locations receiving the brand's updated design standards.
This reflected the continued roll out of Foot Locker's 'Reimagined and Refresh' programmes, designed to 'elevate our in-store experience', CEO Mary Dillon said in a release.
Ahead of Dick's acquisition, Foot Locker tackles falling sales
With this, Foot Locker reaffirmed its Q1 results, already outlined on a preliminary basis earlier this month, which Dillon had said fell 'below our expectations as we experienced softer traffic trends globally'.
Total sales were down 4.6 percent to 1.79 billion dollars, while comparable sales decreased 2.6 percent. This drop was particularly impacted by an 8.5 percent decrease in comparable sales for Foot Locker's international business, compared to a more marginal 0.5 percent drop in North American sales.
Most notably, Foot Locker swung to a loss during Q1. The company fell from a net income of eight million dollars in the same period of the year prior to a net loss of 363 million dollars.
On a non-GAAP basis, net loss came to six million dollars. First quarter net loss per share amounted to 3.81 dollars, compared with earnings per share of 0.09 dollars in the first quarter of 2024.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Courier
19 hours ago
- The Courier
‘Call me Mr Tea' — The people scalded by Perthshire's great tea scandal
Picture the scene: Paris. March 14, 2015. The great and good of the world's tea industry gather for a lavish party, a celebration of their achievements over the past 12 months. This night at the Salon de Thé awards is a special one for Scotland, as Perthshire's own Wee Tea Plantation scores a coveted gold award. The company's Dalreoch white tea has been crowned the best tea in the world. The announcement sparks a media buzz. The plantation's Tam O'Braan tells BBC Five Live presented Nicky Campbell that morning he cannot attend the ceremony as his wife is about to give birth to twins. But he says he is sending a colleague to read out the speech he penned. 'I suppose you could call me Mr Tea after winning such a major award,' he told reporters. Coupled with a silver gong from the Tea Exchange in London, it really is a remarkable achievement for a Scottish business – particularly one set up just over six months earlier. Except the awards ceremony never happened. O'Braan – known by prosecutors as Thomas Robinson – made it up to boost sales and win contracts. The fake awards were part of a wider deception that hoodwinked not only the owners of some of the country's best known hotels but also wholesalers, journalists, landowners and businesses. Robinson was this week convicted of an elaborate £550k fraud, taking in five-star hoteliers and genuine tea growers. At his trial, he distanced himself from the Salon de Thé prize claiming it was gourmet tea firm Mariage Freres' award. But he said he remembered seeing some kind of gold medallion. 'I didn't get to keep it,' he said. 'But it must have had some standing because the buyers from Fortnum and Mason wanted to display it in their store.' Asked if the whole thing was made up, he said: 'I'm taking it on trust that the award does exist.' The Courier was also caught up in Robinson's web of lies. In February 2017, we reported how thieves had stolen tea leaves from his Dalreoch farm. The report was based on information provided to us by the company, while Robinson was recovering from a heart attack we were told. The theft was never reported to Police Scotland and it emerged during the trial the thefts may have been faked ahead of a council inspection of the land. Here we look at just a handful of others who were caught out by Robinson's great tea blag. In hindsight, alarm bells should have been ringing for London tea seller Alistair Rea, when Robinson – his best customer – asked him to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The document was purportedly a legally binding contract demanding Mr Rea's silence on all correspondence between him and Robinson. Robinson first contacted sole-trader Mr Rea in August 2015, when his business What-Cha, selling top end tea from around the world, was starting out on eBay. He asked how degradable his loose leaf black tea was, before putting in an order for 30kg. He asked for it to be delivered to a PO address in Glasgow's Bath Street. Over a period of nearly three-and-a-half years, Robinson ordered about 700kg of loose leaf tea from as far afield as China, Malawi and Sri Lanka, often at thousands of pounds a time. He often asked about the produce and requested photos to see if they were 'leafy enough'. Mr Rea, 36, said he had never before been asked by a customer to sign a confidentiality agreement. 'I agreed to sign it to keep the business relationship going,' he said. The paper was sent from Robinson – not from a lawyer – in October 2015, not long after he began buying from What-Cha. In February 2016, Robinson visited Mr Rea's business premises – a spare room at his Islington home – to pick up more tea. Robinson explained to the tea vendor he had been out of action for a while following a heart attack and would making big orders to help catch up with customers. Mr Rea did not know Robinson had a tea plantation but suspected he had been selling on his tea leaves. Peter Pejacsevich, a forester and farmer who owns 680 acres of land on the banks of Loch Tummel, said his interest was piqued when reading a news article about Scottish tea plantations in 2016. One of the people mentioned in the piece was Perthshire's Tam O'Braan whose tea, it stated, was being sold by Fortnum and Mason. Mr Pejacsevich, 70, decided to investigate further, with the idea of growing tea plants on his own land. By email, he contacted Robinson, who he knew only as O'Braan, before meeting up at his Amulree site. There, he could see about 100 or so plants, about a metre high, despite Robinson's claims he had a field of tens of thousands of plants near his home. 'I can't recall if he said if these were grown on the farm but the implication was that they were grown there,' said Mr Pejacsevich. The London-based landowner noticed Robinson had a slight limp, which he told him was 'the result of military action'. Mr Pejacsevich struck a deal to buy 1,200 plants at £15,000. Robinson was given a key and granted access to the farmer's land at Loch Tummel. He told Mr Pejacsevich a group of agricultural students had been employed to harvest the leaves. These so-called 'woofers' – a term for people who work for rural firms in exchange for bed and board – were said to have stayed at the farm with Robinson, although there was no evidence they ever existed. Some time later, Mr Pejacsevich was shown a tea menu from the Balmoral Hotel. It offered jasmine green tea 'grown on the banks of Loch Tummel'. Mr Pejacsevich said there had been no other teas growing near the loch and stressed he had not given Robinson permission to sell on tea from his plantation. In court, Robinson blamed a man called 'Billy' for looking after Mr Pejacsevich's crops. Antiques dealer and farmer Henry Baggott was – initially at least – an enthusiastic supporter. 'It was interesting to hear someone was growing tea in Scotland and doing it so well,' he said. 'It was exciting that someone was championing this here in Scotland.' He got in touch with Robinson – or O'Braan as he knew him – in 2015 and went to visit his farm. There he saw a few hundred plants. 'From what I saw, they seemed to be pretty healthy but it was all new to me at that stage.' During their talks, Robinson told Mr Baggott he had been in the army, 'in a regiment like the Paras.' 'If someone tells you they had been in the army, you believe them,' he said. After tests on his own soil at his wife's family farm near Castle Douglas, Baggott agreed to buy 700 plants. 'Tam came with a team from the plantation. 'There was very little guidance from Tam – it was very much dig a hole, pop in a plant and away we go. 'At the time, we thought this was great. 'It was only subsequently we looked closer and could see they had been badly planted and were in poor quality. They soon started dying.' In the first year, between 25-to-30% of the plants were lost. After about seven years, he only managed to harvest about 100 grammes of tea. Mr Baggott said Tam 'was a very hard man to get hold of after we initially planted his plants.'
The National
3 days ago
- The National
Labour migration crackdown to shrink UK economy, expert analysis finds
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer drew furious comparisons to the racist 20th-century Tory politician Enoch Powell after he claimed the UK was becoming an 'island of strangers' in a speech in which he also outlined plans to tighten migration rules. The Labour leader outlined measures including ending all visas for care workers, extending the wait to apply for settlement or citizenship from five years to 10, introducing higher English standard tests, and a cut in the amount of time foreign students at UK universities can stay after graduating. READ MORE: Scottish care sector chief compares Keir Starmer to Enoch Powell in damning comments The Home Office said that the changes could reduce the number of people coming to the UK by up to 100,000 per year – while Starmer dismissed concerns that doing so would negatively impact the UK economy. However, analysis from Bloomberg Economics has now projected that the measures will in fact cut UK GDP by 0.6% by 2029/30. Tax revenues would also drop by around £9 billion per year, the analysis further found. It comes despite Labour having repeatedly made clear that economic growth is their first priority. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he is aiming to grow the economy before anything elseBloomberg Economics' Ana Andrade said: 'The Government's new migration policy is one more reason to think the autumn statement will be another challenging event for the Chancellor. 'Labour's turn to the right on migration may be seen as politically savvy. In time, it might also ease the demands on housing and public services. 'In the near term, however, the most obvious consequences of tighter migration controls could well be more difficult decisions on tax and spending.' READ MORE: 'You've been learning': Nigel Farage praises Keir Starmer for immigration speech The news comes after First Minister John Swinney said that Labour's immigration stance poses a 'critical economic threat' to Scotland. 'I made this point to the Prime Minister when I met him on Friday – that the changing dynamics of our labour market and the need for us to encourage migration to support our working age population has to be recognised in the approach that is taken to migration in the United Kingdom," the SNP leader said. Earlier in May, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the biggest fall in net migration since the pandemic. The figure stood at an estimated 431,000 in the year ending December 2024, down 49.9% from 860,000 a year earlier. The biggest drop in terms of numbers was seen in non-EU nationals coming to the UK for work – this fell by 108,000, which was a 49% fall in the year ending December 2024. The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said at the time that the 'record-breaking decline' in net migration was possible 'primarily because numbers had previously been so high'. Its director, Dr Madeleine Sumption, said the economic impact of the fall 'is actually likely to be relatively small' because 'the groups that have driven the decline, such as study and work dependants, are neither the highest skilled, highest-paid migrants who make substantial contributions to tax revenues, nor the most disadvantaged groups that require substantial support'.
Fashion United
3 days ago
- Fashion United
Foot Locker closes 56 stores as it swings to loss in Q1
Foot Locker enacted a series of global store closures in the first quarter ended May 3, 2025, as it swung into a loss amid declining sales. The company, which earlier this month announced it was to be acquired by US sports retailer Dick's Sporting Goods, said that it closed 56 stores over the reported period. These included locations in South Korea, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Greece and Romania. Notably, for the latter two regions, Foot Locker sold its licensed operations to its licensing partner in April 2025. The closures fell alongside the opening of nine new stores, as well as the remodel and relocation of 11 stores, with a further 69 locations receiving the brand's updated design standards. This reflected the continued roll out of Foot Locker's 'Reimagined and Refresh' programmes, designed to 'elevate our in-store experience', CEO Mary Dillon said in a release. Ahead of Dick's acquisition, Foot Locker tackles falling sales With this, Foot Locker reaffirmed its Q1 results, already outlined on a preliminary basis earlier this month, which Dillon had said fell 'below our expectations as we experienced softer traffic trends globally'. Total sales were down 4.6 percent to 1.79 billion dollars, while comparable sales decreased 2.6 percent. This drop was particularly impacted by an 8.5 percent decrease in comparable sales for Foot Locker's international business, compared to a more marginal 0.5 percent drop in North American sales. Most notably, Foot Locker swung to a loss during Q1. The company fell from a net income of eight million dollars in the same period of the year prior to a net loss of 363 million dollars. On a non-GAAP basis, net loss came to six million dollars. First quarter net loss per share amounted to 3.81 dollars, compared with earnings per share of 0.09 dollars in the first quarter of 2024.
