The company’s Free People group, which includes its namesake apparel brand as well as its activewear division FP Movement, recorded 17% sales growth in the latest quarter. The growth helped Urban Outfitters’s top line climb 11% overall.
Morrisons is preparing to pull down the shutters on 100 loss-making convenience stores in a move that places hundreds of shop-floor jobs in jeopardy, with the Bradford-based grocer pointing the finger squarely at Labour’s tax and wage agenda for tipping the sites into terminal decline.
Britain’s fifth-largest supermarket said the shops, all of them legacy outlets from its 2022 rescue of collapsed convenience chain McColl’s, had been “challenged for a number of years” despite remedial action. The closures will be phased in over the coming months, with affected staff entering consultation.
In an unusually pointed statement, a spokesman for the group said the situation had been “exacerbated in more recent years by significant cost increases resulting from Government policy choices, which have made returning these stores to profitability even more difficult”. While bosses stopped short of naming specific measures, the timing leaves little room for ambiguity.
From 1 April, the National Living Wage rose by 50p to £12.71 an hour for those aged 21 and over, with the 18-to-20 rate climbing 85p to £10.85 and the apprentice rate up 45p to £8. Layered on top is last year’s increase in employer National Insurance contributions, which lifted the headline rate from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent and dragged the secondary threshold down from £9,100 to £5,000 — a double whammy that has fallen most heavily on retailers reliant on part-time labour.
The British Retail Consortium has warned that the combined hit added some £5bn to industry wage bills last year alone, and that as many as 160,000 retail roles could be lost over the next three years as employers re-engineer their cost base. Morrisons’ announcement is the latest data point in that grim arithmetic.
Advertisement
The McColl’s portfolio has proved a persistent thorn in chief executive Rami Baitiéh’s side. Morrisons paid roughly £190m to take the chain out of administration in May 2022, and almost immediately moved to shutter 132 of the worst-performing sites while converting the remainder to its Morrisons Daily fascia. The latest round of closures suggests that conversion alone has not been enough to fix the unit economics on a stubborn rump of stores.
It is also the third significant restructuring announcement from the grocer in recent months. Earlier this year, Morrisons confirmed it was closing 103 cafés, florists, pharmacies and Market Kitchens in a sweeping shake-up of in-store services, and last month staff were told the company was consulting on up to 200 head office redundancies at its Bradford headquarters as part of an artificial intelligence-driven productivity drive.
Despite the closures, Morrisons was at pains to stress that its convenience strategy is far from in retreat. The group still operates around 1,700 convenience stores alongside 497 supermarkets and employs roughly 95,000 people. It said it remained on the front foot when it came to opening “hundreds more” franchise convenience stores in the coming years, arguing that pruning the underperforming tail and bolting on capital-light franchise sites would leave its convenience estate “stronger overall”.
For SME owners watching from the sidelines, the message is sobering. When a £20bn turnover supermarket cannot make the numbers stack up on stores carrying its own brand, smaller independents operating on slimmer margins will be feeling the squeeze even more acutely. The Treasury’s own minimum wage uplift, unveiled in last autumn’s Budget, was billed as a pay rise for the lowest earners; for many small employers, it has become a stress test of their viability.
Advertisement
The Department for Business and Trade has been approached for comment.
Amy Ingham
Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.
The retailer said the former McColl’s shops have been loss-making for years, with Morrisons claiming ‘Government policy choices’ have made returning the stores to profitability even more difficult
(Image: PA)
Morrisons is set to close approximately 100 loss-making convenience stores as the supermarket grapples with cost pressures it attributes to “Government policy”.
The stores earmarked for closure are said to have been unprofitable for several years and were formerly McColl’s outlets, which the chain took over in 2022.
The proposals would see the stores shuttered within the coming months, with hundreds of shop workers understood to be facing redundancy.
A spokesman for Morrisons said: “The performance of all company owned stores across our convenience business is subject to continuous review.
Advertisement
“This process has identified a number of stores, which were part of the McColl’s acquisition, whose performance has been challenged for a number of years and which are loss making, despite remedial action.
“This situation has been exacerbated in more recent years by significant cost increases resulting from Government policy choices, which have made returning these stores to profitability even more difficult.
“Having completed the review, we are now proposing to take the tough but necessary decision to close a number of these stores over the next few months.”
The specific Government policy choices were not given, though the announcement comes amid a period in which many retailers have been contending with mounting business costs, including higher minimum wages and last year’s national insurance rate increase.
Advertisement
Morrisons runs about 1,700 convenience stores alongside approximately 500 supermarkets, and has a workforce of some 95,000 staff. However, alongside the latest round of closure announcements, Morrisons emphasised that it continues to identify opportunities to launch hundreds more franchise convenience outlets in the coming years.
The supermarket chain also maintained that the proposed closures combined with its strategy for new locations would be “improving the quality of our convenience estate and making it stronger overall”.
Last month, Morrisons informed employees it was beginning a consultation process regarding redundancies at its Bradford head office, affecting fewer than 10% of positions at the site.
The grocer has also recently closed a number of its cafés, convenience shops, florists and fresh food counters as part of a restructuring programme which resulted in several hundred job losses.
I am mostly a trader engaging in both long and short bets intraday and occasionally over the short- to medium term. My historical focus has been mostly on tech stocks but over the past couple of years I have also started broad coverage of the offshore drilling and supply industry as well as the shipping industry in general (tankers, containers, drybulk). In addition, I am having a close eye on the still nascent fuel cell industry.I am located in Germany and have worked quite some time as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers before becoming a daytrader almost 20 years ago. During this time, I managed to successfully maneuver the burst of the dotcom bubble and the aftermath of the world trade center attacks as well as the subprime crisis.Despite not being a native speaker, I always try to deliver high quality research to followers and the entire Seeking Alpha community.
Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
Customers shop at a Walmart store on May 13, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
President Donald Trump suggested last month he would look out for companies that didn’t seek tariff refunds after the Supreme Court struck down his wide-ranging global duties.
Advertisement
At first, some major firms like Amazon appeared to be holding off on asking for money back over concerns they’d offend the often transactional president and end up in his crosshairs, CNBC reported earlier this year. But now some of the largest U.S. companies from Walmart to Apple have confirmed they’re seeking what they’re owed — regardless of the consequences.
Home Depot, General Motors, John Deere, FedEx and Costco are among the other major U.S. corporations that have said they are trying to get refunds. The moves may not represent a sea change in how companies handle their relationships with Trump. Even so, they show key examples of when they’re willing to publicly break with the president, after he told CNBC he would “remember” if companies decided not to seek refunds.
There’s a strong business incentive to apply — as well as, for many, a fiduciary responsibility. Major companies have a chance to regain potentially billions of dollars and maximize returns for shareholders.
More than $35 billion in refund money has already been processed and is on its way to businesses’ bank accounts, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a court filing earlier this month. The government owes roughly $166 billion in refunds overall.
Advertisement
‘I’ll remember them’
When Trump appeared on “Squawk Box” last month, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin said that at the time, Apple was among the companies that had held off on applying for a refund over apparent concerns it would upset the president. In response, Trump said it was “Brilliant if they don’t do that.”
“Actually, if they don’t do that, they’ve got to know me very well,” he said. “I’m very honored by what you just said.”
“If they don’t do that, I’ll remember them,” Trump said.
The comments made waves around Washington, where lobbyists and business groups say it initially gave some importers pause over whether to apply for the money they were due. Companies have been trying to parse what exactly the president might have meant with his remark, and whether and how the administration could retaliate against them for moving through the process.
But the threat has not deterred the largest U.S. companies from trying to claw back what they paid in tariffs. Take the largest U.S. retailer Walmart, which drew Trump’s ire last year when it said it could have to raise prices in response to the duties, sparking Trump to tell the retailer to “eat the tariffs” and warn he would be “watching.”
Advertisement
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Walmart finance chief John David Rainey confirmed that the company applied to get back the money it paid for so-called IEEPA tariffs, but doesn’t expect a major windfall if and when it is paid back.
“We have availed ourselves of the option to participate in those refunds. For us, it’s a relatively small part of our overall business,” said Rainey when discussing the company’s fiscal first-quarter results. “To be eligible for those refunds, you need to be the importer of record, and for us, where we are the importer of record, it’s about half of 1% of our U.S. sales.”
In its most recent full fiscal year 2026, Walmart U.S. saw $483 billion in net sales, so half of 1% would total about $2.42 billion. While that total is larger than many companies’ annual revenue, Rainey said it’s hardly material for a business that saw more than $713 billion in total revenue last fiscal year.
Still, “every little bit matters,” he said.
Advertisement
“We’re going to prioritize those refunds if and when we get them towards investing in price for our customers,” he said. “We recognize that given where we are right now with both the stress on the consumer as well as the retention of the share gains that we’ve seen, the best ROI on that dollar of capital is to invest in price for our customers.”
Walmart is among the companies that have said they could try to use the money to benefit customers, even in indirect ways. Deploying the refunds to keep prices low for consumers has become a theme among companies applying for them.
“What we have heard most of all in terms of uses is, this is going to help us avoid raising prices as quickly as we thought we were going to have to,” said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “That’s a hard thing to telegraph, but it’s real.”
Walmart confirmed it was seeking money back Thursday after Target CFO Jim Lee said on Wednesday the company was “working through the process” of getting a refund. Home Depot finance chief Richard McPhail also said Tuesday the retailer had applied for and had “received an immaterial amount to date.”
Advertisement
“We have assumed that that could provide a significant offset to those costs,” he told analysts.
Some firms have sought to find ways to spend any refund money in ways that would appease both the White House and their customers, one representative of an influential business group said. For example, Apple has said since Trump’s comments that it is applying for a tariff refund.
It plans to reinvest any money it gets back into “U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing,” a major priority for Trump, Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a call with analysts last month.
Meanwhile, other major companies have stayed quiet about whether they’ll try to claw back their tariff payments.
Advertisement
Amazon, which was sued in a class action lawsuit last week over its decision not to pursue a refund, hasn’t responded to requests for comment on whether it’ll apply to get money back.
Others aren’t ready to admit their refund plans one way or another. On Wednesday, Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison would not say whether the retailer is applying.
“We’re just monitoring the situation,” said Ellison. “We haven’t talked publicly about whether we filed or not, but what we have done is paid really close attention to the situation, understanding that when tariff refunds go out, they go out to everybody, and so we’re right now trying to determine if and when those refunds happen.”
ITC has declared a final dividend of Rs 8 per share for FY26, with May 27 (Wednesday) set as the record date to determine eligible shareholders. This brings the FMCG major’s total dividend payout to Rs 90.5 per share since 2020.
Notably, this is the largest dividend announced by the company in nearly six years, since the final dividend of Rs 10.15 per share paid in 2020. Along with the interim dividend of Rs 6.5 per share declared in January this year, ITC’s total dividend payout for FY26 stands at Rs 14.50 per share with a face value of Re 1 each.
The FMCG company has declared 32 payouts since July 3, 2001, and has a dividend yield of 4.71%, according to data on Trendlyne. The latest dividend will be paid to eligible shareholders between July 24 and 29. However, it is important to note that the dividend is subject to shareholders’ approval at its upcoming Annual General Meeting scheduled on July 23.
In the previous financial year, ITC paid a final dividend of Rs 7.85 in May 2025 and an interim dividend of Rs 6.5 in February. This took the total dividend payout for FY25 to Rs 14.35 per share.
Advertisement
Apart from dividends, ITC issued bonus shares to eligible shareholders in 2016 (1:2) and 2010 (1:1). The company also executed a mega demerger of its hotels segment, with the stock adjusting to the restructuring the January last year, followed by the listing of ITC Hotels on stock exchanges.
Live Events
ITC Q4 Results
ITC announced the dividend along with its results for the January-March quarter of FY26. The company reported a 5% year-on-year (YoY) growth in its standalone net profit at Rs 5,113 crore for Q4 FY26, compared to Rs 4,875 crore in the year-ago quarter. Revenue from operations meanwhile rose 17% YoY to Rs 21,695 crore during the quarter under review, from Rs 18,495 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year. ITC’s cigarettes business remained the largest contributor to profitability. Revenue from the FMCG-cigarettes segment rose 32% YoY to Rs 11,066 crore during the quarter, compared with Rs 8,400 crore a year ago. Also read:What Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others are saying after ITC’s Q4 results?
(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)
The AvalonBay Communities Inc. Park Loggia condominium, center, is reflected in a building in New York, U.S.
Mark Abramson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The biggest ever merger of real estate investment trusts — the combination of Equity Residential and AvalonBay, announced Thursday — has investors and analysts alike left with dropped jaws.
Advertisement
The all-stock merger will have a market capitalization of about $52 billion and a total enterprise value of approximately $69 billion, according to a release. It will create one of the largest real estate companies in the U.S., with more than 180,000 rental apartments.
“This combination creates a new and fundamentally stronger company with differentiated capabilities that will drive structurally superior cash flow generation, earnings and dividend growth, and value for shareholders,” said Benjamin Schall, CEO of AvalonBay.
Schall will become CEO of the newly formed company, and Equity Residential CEO Mark Parrell will retire when the transaction closes.
Allan Swaringen, president and CEO of JLL Income Property Trust, which manages about $90 billion of real estate investments globally for institutional clients and high-net-worth individuals, called the tie-up “unbelievable.”
Advertisement
“That they would merge is really incredible,” he said.
Swaringen noted that the stocks of both companies are trading at below their net asset values, a situation that makes them both ripe to be bought and privatized.
Get Property Play directly to your inbox
CNBC’s Property Play with Diana Olick covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, delivered weekly to your inbox.
“I think this might be a defense against privatization. By putting themselves together, they’re almost too big to get bought,” Swaringen said.
He also noted the high cost of building technology, which residential tenants now demand – from online leasing to credit checking to delivering bandwidth and Wi-Fi. Consolidating could reduce those costs.
“Strategically, the rationale is straightforward: scale, liquidity, balance sheet efficiency and overhead synergies,” said David Auerbach, chief investment officer at Hoya Capital Real Estate.
Auerbach said he thinks this could be the first of more megadeals in the space.
Advertisement
“We have WAY too many Apartment REITs out there, and it’s a sector ripe for consolidation,” he wrote in emailed comments to CNBC.
Auerbach noted that the deal comes after a challenging stretch for apartment landlords, who have been dealing with sluggish rent growth due to the post-Covid construction boom that delivered a massive wave of new supply.
Neither Auerbach nor Swaringen said they expect to see any effect on rents. While the combined company’s market share might be growing in certain markets, they are still going to have to compete with the rest of the field. The apartment market is highly diversified, building to building, giving consumers a lot of options.
Regulatory and political scrutiny may arise, given the sheer size of the deal and the current drumbeat on housing affordability. But even after merging, the combined company will have a small market share.
Advertisement
“While there are no antitrust regulatory approvals needed, there is the political PR battle for which we think management well articulated [that] the combined company is < 3% market share and heavily invests in expanding housing,” wrote Alexander Goldfarb, senior analyst with Piper Sandler. “Ultimately, we believe the combined company needs to improve earnings growth beyond the one-time synergies to show bigger is actually more profitable.”
The BBC’s Michelle Fleury reports from Wall Street on recent government filings showing that in the first three months of this year thousands of stock market trades were made on behalf of President Donald Trump.
The trading includes shares in some of America’s biggest companies.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization said that neither the president, his family or the company played any role in selecting or approving investments. They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management, the statement said.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login