Macy's rose over 6% in morning trading after a strong financial result.
Comparable sales increased 28.3% on an owned basis and were up 27.8% on an owned-plus-licensed basis against the soft pandemic comparable from a year ago.
Digital sales were up 12% compared to a year ago and were up 36% on a two-year comparison. Macy's (M) said it has 7.2M new customers over the last two years.
Gross margin for the quarter was 36.5% vs. 35.8% consensus, 33.7% a year ago and 36.8% two years ago. Improvement as a result of merchandise margin was said to be largely due to benefits from pricing, promotion and inventory productivity enhanced by the Polaris strategy. The gross margin beat also came with some retailers struggling amid supply chain issues and labor inflation