Many Facebook Employees to Work From Home Permanently

May 22, 2020
Business

Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.

Lululemon, the athleisure company known for its $100 yoga pants, said that it expected to have 70 percent of its stores reopened in coming weeks with new safeguards in place. It plans to add cashless payments “where permissible” and ask staff to “state a daily health declaration before every shift.” The company, which had 491 stores worldwide as of Feb. 2, said that it has reopened 150 locations and is set to reopen 200 more during the next two weeks. The company declined to share details what constituted the health declaration or about specific openings in the United States.
Best Buy said on Thursday that its first quarter sales fell 6.3 percent to $8.6 billion as it posted a net profit of $159 million. The chain benefited as consumers sought “work or learn from home” products, as well as gaming merchandise. Domestically, its comparable online sales surged 155 percent from last year. The retailer said it switched to curbside-only service on March 22, halfway through the quarter, as a safety measure, and that it retained about 81 percent of last year’s sales in the last six weeks of the quarter, which ended May 2.

TJX, the owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, said its sales fell 52 percent to $4.4 billion in the first quarter because of store closings, pushing the company to a net loss of $887 million. But the off-price retailer said it was encouraged by “very strong sales” as it started to resume business. The company has fully or partially reopened stores in 25 states, and anticipates that most of its locations could be reopened by the end of June, based on government guidance.

Reporting was contributed by Jeanna Smialek, Kate Conger, Emily Cochrane, Niraj Chokshi, Geneva Abdul, Jack Nicas, Patricia Cohen, Marc Tracy, Mohammed Hadi, Sapna Maheshwari, Alexandra Stevenson, Cao Li, Carlos Tejada, Katie Robertson, Daniel Victor and Kevin Granville.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/coronavirus-stock-market-today.html