Staples to close up to 225 stores by 2015

“A year ago, we announced a plan to fundamentally reinvent our company,” said Ron Sargent, Staples’ chairman and chief executive officer. “With nearly half of our sales generated online today, we’re meeting the changing needs of business customers and taking aggressive action to reduce costs and improve efficiency.”

The nearest Staples to Berkeley County is the one located on North Main Street in Summerville.  It’s still too early to tell if this location will be one of the stores forced to close.  The company’s CEO has not stated which stores would be impacted.

The company also initiated a multi-year cost savings plan which is expected to generate annualized pre-tax cost savings of approximately $500 million by the end of 2015. The savings are expected to come from reducing supply chain, retail store closures and labor optimization, non-product related costs, IT hardware and services, marketing, sales force, and customer service.

For the first quarter of 2014, the company expects sales to decrease versus the first quarter of 2013. The company expects to achieve fully diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.17 to $0.22 for the first quarter of 2014. This guidance does not reflect any potential impact on sales or earnings per share related to 2014 restructuring activities.

The company also expects to generate more than $600 million of free cash flow for the full year 2014, which reflects cash payments related to previously announced restructuring activities and the company’s consideration of the impact from potential 2014 restructuring activities.