Michaels Stores

Michaels Stores Inc. (Irving, Texas) reported a 58.6 percent jump in net income for its first quarter ended April 30, 2005.

Total sales for the quarter increased 13.1 percent. Same-store sales increased 7.8 percent. The best performing geographic regions were the Pacific, Southeast and Northern zones, and the best departmental performances came in the paper crafting, general crafts, wedding & ribbon, and kids crafts categories with strong yarn department sales contributing solidly to overall same-store sales for the quarter.

“We are very pleased with our record sales and earnings performance for the first quarter,” said ceo Michael Rouleau. “Our strong same-store sales were largely driven by leveraging our new Perpetual Inventory and Automated Replenishment merchandising systems. These systems enable us to maintain higher store-level merchandise in-stocks and to maximize our promotional programs, our feature item merchandising, and our high growth trend businesses. These systems also enable us to redeploy our investment in inventory to categories with the strongest growth potential and reduce our investment in slow moving products, thereby improving the overall quality of our inventory and enhancing our gross margin performance over the long term. In addition, our continued focus on operational efficiencies and cost controls during the quarter allowed us to further leverage our strong sales growth and expand our operating margin to a record first quarter level.”