Sales

Sales at Giant Food declined yet again in the fourth quarter of last year, but the grocer's parent company said that it has seen positive results from a price reduction program it recently implemented at the supermarket chain. Dutch food company Royal Ahold NV, which owns Giant, also said plans to sell Columbia-based U.S. Foodservice, the food distributor it also owns, are on track for later this year. "It's good to be a seller when there is a lot of interest," Ahold President and CEO Anders Moberg said in a conference call with analysts yesterday.

A flurry of reports yesterday signaled worsening conditions for the nation's already distressed housing market. The supply of unsold U.S. homes ballooned to an 18-year high in August as demand for existing homes fell to a five-year low, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors. The Washington-based trade group blamed the onset of the global credit crisis last month for the drop in sales. "The unusual disruptions in the mortgage market resulted in a fairly high number of postponed or canceled sales," said Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist.

Black & Decker is having trouble selling lock sets for doors. And this is just the kind of thing that worries investors and economists. Most lock sets are installed in new homes. And new homes aren't selling, as evidenced by two developments yesterday, a huge second-quarter loss reported by Pulte Homes Inc. and a report by the government that the June decline in new-home sales was the biggest in five months. Those followed reports earlier in the week that sales in the far larger existing-home market fell to the slowest pace in 4 1/2 years in June and that Countrywide Financial, one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders, sees defaults spreading from subprime to more conventional mortgages.

An increasing swath of the Baltimore region is caught up in a housing slump that is getting worse and appears to have further to fall. Average home-sale prices in the first six months of the year fell in a little more than half of Baltimore's suburban communities and a third of city neighborhoods, while sales volume in the region was the lowest for the first half of a year since 2000, a Sun analysis found. The number of areas with declining prices has swelled since 2006, the first full year of the housing market downturn.

Under Armour shares soared nearly 11 percent yesterday to reach an all-time high after the company raised its financial outlook for the year. The stock rose as high as $64.75 during the day before it finally settled to close at $61.24. The company said its improved forecast, which it announced during a scheduled release of second quarter earnings, came after a better-than-expected first half of the year as sales increased across the business in the women's, men's and youth categories.

While the rising cost of pepper is nothing to sneeze at, McCormick & Co. said earnings for the second half of the year should be higher than previously forecast after reporting better-than-expected second-quarter results yesterday. The Sparks-based spice maker said new products such as low-sodium Zatarain's rice dishes and expanded advertising in Europe and Asia should buoy sales in the third and fourth quarters, which are typically the company's strongest. McCormick should also benefit from a favorable currency exchange rate.

Piney Orchard, a 2,000-acre planned community in western Anne Arundel County, completed its most successful year since its opening in May 1991 by selling 612 homes last year.The record sales accounted for 39.7 percent of all home sales in that area of Anne Arundel County and had the most sales of any community in the county, according to Meyers Housing Data Reports, a Washington firm that tracks new home construction.Some of the top single-family detached sellers last year in Piney Orchard were Ryan Homes' Station House, which had 36 sales in 1998, and Patriot Homes, which sold 14 homes.

The Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors will hold its 1999 Realtor Awards Event Thursday at 12: 30 p.m. at the Suburban Club of Baltimore.Nominees for the Realtor of the Year awards are William J. Byrnes and Margaret Rome, O'Conor, Piper & Flynn ERA; Stephen A. Campbell, Steve Campbell Realty, Inc.; Brenda Joyce Flagg and Linda Langrall, Coldwell Banker Grempler Realty and Douglas W. Poole, Re/Max Preferred.Awards will also be given in three other categories: the Distinguished Realtor Sales Associate and Realtor Community Service Award; and Affiliate of the Year.

New-vehicle sales, a barometer of Maryland's economic health, continued to cruise for the year as sales rose 16.4 percent last month, according to figures released yesterday by the state Motor Vehicle Administration.February marked the fourth consecutive month in which sales were higher than in the corresponding period of the previous year."Last month was a good time to buy a car," said Jerome H. Fader, chief executive of Atlantic Automotive Group of Owings Mills, which operates 30 new-car dealerships in the state.

Jos. A. Bank Clothiers reported yesterday first-quarter sales of $43.6 million, a 1 percent gain from the first quarter of 1998. But sales at stores open at least a year -- the best measure of a retailer's performance -- fell 8 percent.The company said comparable-store sales were hurt by the opening of 17 stores last year in existing markets. The newer stores cannibalized sales at established stores, the company said.Additionally, the company said March sales suffered from an unsuccessful promotional campaign -- a "wardrobe sale" in March in which customers could save more by spending more.

The Baltimore Sun's average daily circulation for the six months ended Sept. 30 fell nearly 15 percent, compared with a year earlier, as newspaper sales declines accelerated across a struggling industry, the Audit Bureau of Circulations said Monday. Nationwide, average daily newspaper circulation slid 10.6 percent among 379 dailies, while average Sunday circulation was down 7.5 percent for the 562 newspapers reporting, the ABC said. Those drops are steeper than in the previous six-month period through March, when daily circulation fell an average 7.1 percent and Sunday circulation declined 5.4 on average at U.S. newspapers.

Spicemaker McCormick & Co. said third-quarter profit increased 9.5 percent as it began to see the benefit from its acquisition of Lawry's seasoning company last year. The Sparks-based company was also helped by cost-cutting measures and price increases on some of its products. On Thursday, the company reported net income of $75.1 million, or 57 cents per share, for the quarter ended Aug. 31. That was compared with $68.6 million, or 52 cents per share, for the same period a year ago. Sales increased 1 percent to $791.

New-car sales registered in Maryland last month reached 25,251, several hundred less than a year earlier despite the wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program, according to figures from the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration Yet some dealers say they are happy with the clunker program, especially now that the government is finally reimbursing them for cash incentives they gave upfront to buyers. "It worked very well. We sold 20 percent more cars than we did the year before," said Ed Dreiband, president of Northwest Honda and Northwest BMW in Owings Mills.

Home sales continued to rise in the Baltimore metro area last month, though the velocity slowed. Buyers got the keys for about 5 percent more homes in August than a year ago, the third month in a row that year-over-year sales increased, according to numbers released Thursday by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. Year-over-year home sales rose about 10 percent for July and 2 percent for June. It's the first stretch of increased buying since 2005, a frenzied time with fast-rising prices and go-go lending.

You can pretty much count on sales most days at a Jos. A. Bank men's clothing store - part of the Hampstead-based retail chain's strategy is to draw people in with bargains. Company executives said those promotions have helped them continue to record sales increases, while most retailers have seen a decline in business as the recession has caused consumers to pull back on spending. The retailer said Wednesday that second-quarter earnings increased 41 percent as the company continued to draw in shoppers with discounts.

Car dealers and manufacturers said the federal "Cash for Clunkers" program did its job in giving a much-needed boost to the struggling industry, but now they're bracing to see how long-lasting the effects will be. The program, which gave consumers as much as $4,500 to junk their inefficient vehicles for new models, ended at 8 p.m Monday with the Department of Transportation estimating that 700,000 to 800,000 vehicles sold under the program in just a...

Buyers snapped up 10 percent more homes in the Baltimore metro area last month than they did a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2005 and a sign that the long-depressed housing market could finally be turning a corner. July was the second month in a row that home sales rose year-over-year, according to numbers released Monday by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. In June, the increase was 2 percent. The Baltimore-area housing market hasn't seen two back-to-back months of improving sales since the peak of the buying frenzy four years ago. But home sellers eager for values to follow suit could be in for a long wait.

Verizon plans to cut 8,000 jobs; loss in Md. unknown Verizon said Monday that it will accelerate plans to reduce its work force by 8,000 people, with the job cuts to come in the second half of the year and likely to include reductions in Maryland. The New York-based telecommunications company, Maryland's 10th-largest employer, has been shrinking its Wireline business, which provides traditional land-line phone services, as customer demand has fallen. Bob Varettoni, a Verizon spokesman, said most of the 11,500 Maryland workers do work in the Wireline sector, but he did not know how many job cuts might be made in Maryland.

Sellers handed buyers the keys to more homes last month than they did a year ago, the first sales increase in the Baltimore metro area in 2 1/2 years and a hopeful sign for a housing market caught in the worst downturn since the Depression. The uptick was modest - 2 percent - but every local jurisdiction saw a gain except Baltimore, and there the loss was just 1 percent. Multiple-listing service Metropolitan Regional Information Systems said Friday that 2,375 homes changed hands. And pending deals, which aren't counted as sales because they haven't closed, were up 16 percent from a year ago. This comes as average prices continued to fall, down 10 percent compared with June 2008.

Auto sales in the U.S. remain severely depressed, but results released by automakers Wednesday pointed to what could be the first signs of a recovery after a long and bleak run. The industry as a whole declined 28 percent in June compared with a year ago, according to Autodata Corp., with 859,847 cars and light trucks sold, its smallest dip since September. Ford Motor Co., the nation's second-largest automaker, led the way, with a modest 11 percent decline in sales in June, compared with a year earlier, its smallest slide in more than a year.