Target may say that it is safe to use credit cards at its locations, but the credit card data breach that affected millions of customers around the holiday season is still taking its toll. As one of the nation’s largest retailers, the company is struggling to regain consumer confidence and that was reflected in a dismal fourth quarter earnings report.
During the fiscal fourth quarter of 2013 for the company, which ended on Feb. 1, it recorded net earnings of $520 million, compared to $961 million during the same period last year. That’s a drop of 46 percent.
“During the first half of the fourth quarter, our guest-focused holiday merchandising and marketing plans drove better-than-expected sales,” CEO Gregg Steinhafel said in a statement, reports The New York Times. “However, results softened meaningfully following our December announcement of a data breach.”
According to Forbes, the one bit of good news for the company is that it at least beat Wall Street expectations for how bad the report would look. Target’s total fourth quarter sales reached $21.5 billion, just beating $21.45 billion, as some had anticipated. Still, that number was down 3.8 percent over the same time last year.
Back on Dec. 19, Target confirmed that there was a security breach. A total of 110 million customers were affected.
image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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