This week I got to spend two days in Wisconsin attending the Kohl’s Shareholder Meeting. The company sends one represenative from every store to the meeting. It is a very fun, informative and interesting two days in the Midwest. In years past, anyone I’ve known who has gone to it has said that they’ve come back re-energized and excited. That describes how I am feeling very well. I give the company a lot of credit for the logistical nightmare that they put themselves through in order to make sure that every store is represented, but they pulled it off flawlessly and allowed us all to have a really great time.
I’m not going to discuss any of the real details of the meeting here, however the Milwaukee Business Journal has a good recap of the public portion of the event.
On expansion:
Kohl’s also set its 2006 expansion plans at 85 new stores, primarily in the Midwest and Southeast, and said it will build a distribution center in California in support of its western expansion. The company had previously said it would add 80 to 85 stores this year. In all, the company hopes to grow its total number of stores to 1,200 by 2010, accompanied by net income growth of 15 percent to 20 percent.
On Jersey City:
A quarter of the new stores will be smaller than the traditional Kohl’s store, Meier said. One store will be a two-story, 133,000-square-foot facility in a converted Macy’s in Jersey City, N.J., a style that better fits in urban areas, she said. The traditional Kohl’s store is about 86,000 square feet. The smaller stores are about 68,000 square feet.
(According to this article, original from the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City store may in fact be a little larger than that – clocking in a 159,642 square feet.)
And finally, on last year’s fiscal performance:
The company reported that net income for the 12 months ended Jan. 28, 2006, increased 19.7 percent to $842 million, or $2.43 per share, compared with $703.4 million, or $2.04 per share, a year ago. Net income has increased at a compounded annual growth rate of 19.7 percent, the company said. Net sales increased 14.5 percent to $13.4 billion compared with $11.7 billion a year ago. Comparable store sales — sales at stores open during both years — increased 3.4 percent for the year.
Good times. The rest of the article is here. More information via Reuters and Kohl’s press release.