Circuits are Down

Circuit City Stores Inc. (Richmond, Va.) announced that total sales for December 2002 declined 5 percent, including a same-store sales decline of 6 percent.

“While we are disappointed with our comparable-store sales performance in December,” said chairman, president and ceo W. Alan McCollough, “we also recognize that we were up against extremely strong sales comparisons from December of last year, when we generated a 10 percent sales increase, and that our results were consistent with comments made by other retailers throughout the month.

“Following the strong Thanksgiving weekend,” he continued, “sales softened sharply in the first half of December, and improvements in the days immediately before and after Christmas Day were not sufficient to offset the weaker sales trends experienced earlier in the month.”

McCollough did insist that the nation's second-largest consumer electronics retailer posted strong sales in several important categories, such as digital projection televisions, plasma and LCD TVs, digital video recorders, mobile video products, satellite radio and portable digital audio players.

“We also recorded sales gains in . . . entertainment software such as DVD movies and video games and small-screen televisions,” he noted. “Similar to the third quarter, however, we reported weaker sales of high-margin digital satellite systems and wireless communications. Sales of PC hardware also were weaker than last year, with the exception of printers, which benefited from the introduction of new digital imaging models.”