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F500-2023-087-TJX

The off-price department store chain brought in nearly $3.5 billion in profits in 2022, a 7% increase over 2021. TJX dropped 12 spots on the Fortune 500 list after a 22-spot jump last year. 
<ul> 
 	<li>Marmaxx, TJX’s apparel unit, was its biggest revenue driver, bringing in $30 billion of the $49.9 billion the company generated overall. Its HomeGoods division, however, saw slower sales after two years of expansion during the pandemic.</li> 
 	<li>TJX continues to lag in the e-commerce space, which held the company back at COVID’s height.</li> 
 	<li>Still, TJX has outlasted many of its competitors; Bed Bath &amp; Beyond’s bankruptcy may lead to more foot traffic at TJX stores.</li> 
</ul>

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F500-2022-075-TJX

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<span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;TJX took a particularly brutal beating from the pandemic last year, hit by the double whammy of having almost no e-commerce to fall back on when its stores were closed for long periods, and the precipitous drop in spending on fashion. Sales fell 23% to $32.1 billion—but the damage could have been worse. For one thing TJX’s HomeGoods business slipped only 4%. And when its other banners, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, reopened, business rebounded quickly. There are signs of pent-up demand for fashion apparel that should give TJX a boost this year (barring any new outbreaks that close stores en masse again), and spending on the home continues apace.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:14723,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16777215},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;14&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0},&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}">TJX took a particularly brutal beating from the pandemic last year, hit by the double whammy of having almost no e-commerce to fall back on when its stores were closed for long periods, and the precipitous drop in spending on fashion. Sales fell 23% to $32.1 billion—but the damage could have been worse. For one thing TJX’s HomeGoods business slipped only 4%. And when its other banners, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, reopened, business rebounded quickly. There are signs of pent-up demand for fashion apparel that should give TJX a boost this year (barring any new outbreaks that close stores en masse again), and spending on the home continues apace.

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F500-2021-97-TJX

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G500-2020-292-TJX

The off-price discount fashion and home goods retailer continued its long march toward retail dominance, with sales up 7% in 2019, to $41.7 billion, making it bigger than Macy’s and J.C. Penney combined. In the early days of the pandemic, TJX revenues fell off nearly entirely, with all stores closed and only a tiny e-commerce business in operation. But coming out of the lockdowns, TJX's strong financials should make its stores even more desirable to fashion brands as department stores continue to wither, analysts say. What’s more, TJX’s home furnishings chain HomeGoods has been booming alongside the more apparel-oriented T.J. Maxx and Marshalls.

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F500-2020-080-TJX

The off-price discount fashion and home goods retailer continued its long march toward retail dominance, with sales up 7% in 2019, to $41.7 billion, making it bigger than Macy’s and J.C. Penney combined. In the early days of the pandemic, TJX revenues fell off nearly entirely, with all stores closed and only a tiny e-commerce business in operation. But coming out of the lockdowns, TJX's strong financials will make its stores even more desirable to fashion brands as department stores continue to wither. What’s more, TJX’s home furnishings chain Home Goods has been booming alongside the more apparel-oriented T.J. Maxx and Marshalls.

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Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Founded in 1962, TJX is an off-price retailer known for its portfolio of discount department stores, including T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, as well as various international brands like Winners and TK Maxx. It operates in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia.

Q2 2027

Q1 2027

Q4 2026

Q3 2026

Q2 2026

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

TJX (TJX): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the TJX Companies Second Quarter Fiscal twenty twenty six Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, 08/20/2025.

I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ernie Herman, Chief Executive Officer and President of TGX Companies, Inc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Courtney. Before we begin, Deb has some opening comments.

Thank you, Ernie, and good morning. Today's call is being recorded and includes forward looking statements about our results and plans. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to vary materially from these statements, including, among others, the factors identified in our filings with the SEC. Please review our press release for a cautionary statement regarding forward looking statements as well as the full Safe Harbor statements included in the Investors section of our website, tjx.com. We have also detailed the impact of foreign exchange on our consolidated results and our international divisions in today's press release and in the Investors section of tjx.com, along with reconciliations to non GAAP measures we discuss.

Thank you. And now I'll turn it back over to Ernie.

Good morning. Joining me and Deb on the call is John. I'll start today with our second quarter results. I am extremely pleased with our outstanding second quarter performance and our above plan sales, profit margin and earnings per share results. Overall, comp sales for the second quarter exceeded our expectations, increasing 4% and were strong across all of our divisions.

Customer transactions were up at every division and drove our overall comp sales increase. As we have seen through so many retail and economic environments, consumers were drawn to our excellent values and brands. And going forward, we continue to see market share opportunities across each of our U. S. And international divisions.

With our profit results in the second quarter also well exceeding our plan, we are raising our full year guidance for both pre tax profit margin and earnings per share. John will talk about our results and guidance in more detail in a few minutes. I want to thank our global associates who drove these excellent results. Our teams across the company successfully executed our off price business fundamentals to deliver an exciting assortment of merchandise at great value to our customers every day. This is a testament to the talent of our teams and the depth of their off price expertise.

Across our company, we saw our associates working together as One TJX to deliver on our value mission for consumers. As we look to the second half of the year, I am very confident in our position of strength in retail. Our teams are energized by the opportunities we see to keep attracting shoppers to our retail brands and to build upon our success of prior years in being a gifting destination for consumers. We see outstanding buying opportunities in the marketplace for quality branded merchandise, which also gives me great confidence in our plans for the fall and holiday selling seasons. The third quarter is off to a strong start.

We are confident in our full year sales and profitability plans, and as always, we will strive to beat them. Longer term, we believe the strength and resiliency of our flexible off price business model will continue to be a tremendous advantage. We feel great about our core businesses and the opportunities we see for growth with our newer vehicles. We are convinced we have a long runway ahead to capture additional market share worldwide and continue our successful global growth. I'll talk more about our second half opportunities and key strengths in a moment.

But first, I'll turn the call over to John to cover our second quarter results in more detail. Thanks, Ernie.

I also want to add my gratitude to all of our global associates for their continued hard work and commitment to delivering our customers great value every day. Now I'll share some additional details on the second quarter. As Ernie mentioned, our consolidated comp sales growth of 4% came in above our plan. Further, we saw comp increases in both our apparel and home categories with home outperforming apparel. Second quarter pretax profit margin of 11.4% was up 50 basis points versus last year and well above our plan.

Gross margin increased 30 basis points versus last year, primarily due to favorable hedges. Merchandise margin was flat despite higher tariff costs versus last year. Importantly, we are very pleased with our mitigation strategies, which allowed us to offset the tariff pressure we saw in the second quarter. SG and A decreased 30 basis points versus last year. This was primarily due to operational efficiencies as well as a benefit from the timing of certain expenses, some of which we expect to reverse out in the third quarter.

Net interest income negatively impacted pretax profit margin by 10 basis points versus last year. Second quarter diluted earnings per share of $1.1 increased 15% versus last year and was also well above our expectations. Lastly, we were extremely pleased that our second quarter pretax profit margin came in 90 basis points above the high end of our plan. This was due to a combination of items, including lower than expected tariff costs, expense leverage on above plan sales and the timing of certain expenses. This was also partially offset by higher incentive compensation accruals and contribution to TJX's charitable foundations.

Now to our second quarter divisional performance. Again this quarter, customer transactions increased at every division. We see this as an excellent indicator of the strength of our value proposition across our retail banners. At Maramax, comp sales grew a strong 3%, a combination of a higher average basket and an increase in customer transactions drove the comp increase. It was great to see strength in our store performance across all income demographics, which speaks to our broad based appeal of our values.

Marmaxx's segment profit margin was 14.2%, up 10 basis points versus last year. Our Sierra stores and U. S. E commerce sites, which we report as part of this division, also saw strong sales results. We feel great about Marmaxx's performance, the initiatives underway for the second half of the year and our long term opportunities that we believe will allow us to drive sales and capture additional market share.

At HomeGoods, comp sales grew a very strong 5% with strength at both our HomeGoods and HomeSense banners. Segment profit margin grew 10%, up 90 basis points versus last year. Our eclectic assortment of home fashions that we source from around the world are clearly resonating with customers. We are excited about what's in store for the back half of the year and we're confident our customers will be too. We remain confident that we can continue to capture additional share of The U.

S. Home market. TJX Canada's comp sales increased an outstanding 9%. Segment profit margin on a constant currency basis grew to a very strong 16%, up 100 basis points versus last year. Our retail banners in Canada, which consist of Winners, Marshalls and HomeSense, have extremely high brand awareness and customer loyalty.

We see great potential for our Canadian banners for the rest of 2025 and long term and for their continued successful growth across the country. At TJX International, comp sales increased a very strong 5%. Once again, we're very pleased to see sales strength in Europe and outstanding sales in Australia. Segment profit margin on a constant currency basis grew to 5.2%, up 80 basis points versus last year. With our leadership position and decades of international operating experience, we are confident we can continue to be an attractive shopping destination for value seeking customers across Europe and Australia.

Moving to inventory. Balance sheet inventory was up 14% and inventory on a per store basis was up 10% versus last year as we've been buying into the excellent opportunities for quality branded merchandise we've been seeing in the marketplace. We are confident that availability of merchandise will continue to be outstanding and that we are well positioned to flow fresh assortments to our stores and online this fall and holiday season. As to capital allocation, we continue to reinvest in the growth of our business while returning 1,000,000,000 in the second quarter to shareholders through our buyback and dividend programs. Now, I'll turn it back to Ernie.

Thank you, John. Now, I'd like to take a moment and highlight the opportunities we see to keep driving sales and traffic in the second half of the year. First, I am convinced that the consumers will continue to seek out value and that we will remain a very attractive option for consumers seeking great brands, fashions and quality merchandise at compelling prices. Our customer surveys tell us that our value perception remains strong and we are laser focused on keeping it that way. Again, product availability has been outstanding.

Our global world class buying organization of over 1,300 buyers sourced from an ever changing universe of over 21,000 vendors across more than 100 countries. I'm extremely confident that our buyers will bring consumers the right assortment at the right values throughout the fall and holiday season. Next, we feel great about the product category initiatives underway for the back to school and holiday shopping season. Further, we have made our stores a year round shopping destination for gifts and believe we are becoming more top of mind with shoppers with our consumable offerings. We believe that shoppers will be inspired to visit us frequently to see what's new.

Lastly, we are planning exciting marketing campaigns that will continue to reinforce our value leadership. We plan to continue to represent a broad range of shoppers in our advertising and leverage a wide variety of media channels to target a wide customer base. We believe these campaigns will help us continue to attract new shoppers, stay top of mind with our existing customers and encourage cross shopping of our retail banners. Beyond this year, we have great confidence in our key success factors that have served us so well through our nearly fifty year history. We're convinced that these key characteristics of our business set us up extremely well for continued growth around the world over the long term.

First, we are convinced that our position as a trusted value leader in The U. S, Canada, Europe and Australia will continue to be a tremendous advantage. We believe our value proposition of brand, fashion, price and quality will continue to resonate with consumers. Our commitment to offer great value on every item, every day to every customer will always be a top priority. Second, we aim to attract shoppers across a very wide customer demographic with our treasure hunt shopping experience.

Our extensive assortments of good, better and best brands allow us to offer merchandise to a broad range of income and age groups. We believe our strategy of trading across a wide customer demographic differentiates us from many other retailers and is a tremendous advantage. Further, we continue to attract younger customers to our stores, which we believe bodes well for the future. Third, we believe the flexibility of our business will continue to be a significant benefit as we operate through the ever changing macro and retail environments. The flexibility of our buying, store formats, systems and supply chain allow us to merchandise stores individually with a rapidly changing curated mix of goods with a wide range of price points.

Next, we see the long term potential to open an additional 1,800 plus stores in just our current countries and Spain. We also see great growth potential with our joint venture in Mexico and investment in The Middle East. Importantly, I am extremely confident that there will be plenty of quality merchandise available to support our store growth plans. We believe we can keep delivering the best merchandise values and shopping experience to our customers around the world. Lastly, and most importantly, is the longevity and knowledge of our talent, which I believe is unmatched.

Throughout TJX, our management teams have deep decades long off price experience in The U. S. And internationally. We take great pride in our TJX University and other teaching and training programs and are laser focused on succession planning to ensure we develop the next generation of leaders for our company. Additionally, our deep bench gives us great flexibility to rotate talent throughout the company to further develop our future leaders.

I am also very proud of our culture, which I believe is a major differentiator and will continue to be another key component of our success. Summing up, we are extremely pleased to deliver another quarter of strong sales and profitability. We believe our performance and momentum in the first half of the year puts us in an excellent position for continued success for the remainder of the year. We feel great about our value positioning in the current environment and are confident that we will have an appealing assortment of merchandise in our stores and online throughout the fall and winter seasons. We have a strategic vision for long term success and I am convinced that we are set up well to capitalize on the opportunities we see to grow our company and capture market share around the world for many years to come.

Now, I'll turn the call back to John to cover our full year and third quarter guidance, and then we'll open it up for questions.

Thanks again, Ernie. I'll start with our full year fiscal twenty twenty six guidance. We now expect overall comp sales to increase by 3%. We are increasing our full year consolidated sales guidance to a range of $59,300,000,000 to $59,600,000,000 This increase now reflects a significant benefit from favorable foreign exchange rates on the translation of our foreign sales to U. S.

Dollars, as well as the flow through of our above plan sales in the second quarter. We're increasing our full year profitability guidance to be in the range of 11.4% to 11.5%. This would be flat to down 10 basis points versus last year's 11.5%. Moving to gross margin, we now expect it to be in the range of 30.5% to 30.6%, flat to down 10 basis points versus last year's 30.6%. We now expect full year SG and A to be 19.4%, flat versus last year.

We're now assuming net interest income of about $108,000,000 which we expect to delever fiscal twenty twenty six pretax profit margin by 10 basis points. Our full year guidance assumes a tax rate of 24.5% and a weighted average share count of approximately 1,130,000,000.00 shares. As a result of these assumptions, we're increasing our full year diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $4.52 to $4.57 up 6% to 7% versus last year's diluted earnings per share of $4.26 This EPS guidance now includes our second quarter above planned sales and a negative 1% impact to EPS growth due to unfavorable foreign exchange versus a negative 3% impact on our previous guidance. Moving to the third quarter, we expect overall comp sales to increase 2% to 3%, consolidated sales to be in the range of $14,700,000,000 to $14,800,000,000 pretax profit to be in the range of 12% to 12.1%, down 20 to 30 basis points versus last year's 12.3% gross margin to be in the range of 31.6% to 31.7%. This would be flat to up 10 basis points versus last year.

SG and A to be 19.8%, 30 basis points unfavorable to last year. We're also assuming net interest income of about $25,000,000 which we expect to delever third quarter pretax profit margin by 10 basis points. Our third quarter guidance also assumes a tax rate of 24.7% and weighted average share count of approximately 1,130,000,000.00 shares. Based on these assumptions, we expect third quarter diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $1.17 to $1.19 up 3% to 4% versus last year's $1.14 Lastly, our implied guidance for the fourth quarter assumes that overall comp sales would be up 2% to 3%, pretax profit margin would be in the range of 11.7% to 11.8%, up 10 basis to 20 basis points versus last year and diluted earnings per share would be in the range of $1.33 to $1.36 up 8% to 11% versus last year. As for tariffs, our third quarter, fourth quarter and full year guidance assumes that we'll be able to offset the incremental tariff pressure on our business this year.

We're making an assumption that the current level of tariffs on imports into The U. S. Will stay in place for the remainder of the year. In closing, I want to reiterate earnings confidence in our plans for the second half of the year and our long term opportunities. I also want to emphasize that we remain in an excellent position to continue to invest in the growth of the company while simultaneously returning significant cash to our shareholders.

Now we're happy to take your questions. As a reminder, please limit your questions to one per person, so we can answer as many questions as we can. Thanks. And now we'll open it up for questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Matthew Boss.

Thanks and congrats on another nice quarter.

Ernie, could you speak to the consistency of your comps despite the volatile macro backdrop and elaborate on strength that you've seen to start the third quarter and excitement around product availability? And then for John, just maybe puts and takes on merchandise margins in the back half of the year relative to flat performance in the second quarter despite the impact of tariffs that you saw.

Okay, sounds good, Matt. Yes, consistency, where I give the teams a lot of credit and again, we've talked about the broad range of the customer base that we go after. But what I really like to highlight, we mentioned it a little bit in the script, but our categories of business were healthy across all areas, meaning home, apparel, accessories, all of that was good. That combined with our flexible business model, I think allows us to execute in a more consistent fashion on our comp sales, because we're able to flex regardless of and you mentioned availability. Yes, availability has continued to be fantastic out there.

But again, in terms of demand by family of business, whether you're dealing with ladies or men's apparel or kids apparel or our accessories divisions of which there are multiple families of business in there and our home business, because we're so flexible in the way we buy hand to mouth, we are able to go after the opportunities across all the different families of business, which then results and I think a more consistent comp sales performance. So I believe we're sometimes able to escape Matt, which I think is what you're getting at is the volatility of having a quarter all of a sudden your comps are four points off the prior quarter, which is not uncommon in retail. For us, it's less common. As you can see, by the way, Marmaxx got a point better than Q1 as did a lot of our international division. So, think the flexibility of the business model and at the same time we're taking advantage I think of a marketplace out there where you've had store closures and perhaps less exciting execution across the board and retail brick and mortar specifically.

And I think that helps us to bobbin weave and take advantage of consistency to keep driving consistency in our sales. By the way, point B of your first question when you mentioned availability that and I did mention that back, as you know, a few months ago. It continues to be super strong availability as we go into Q3. I guess I'll hand it over to John now.

Yes. So Matt, on merchandise margin, not a tremendous amount to add from what our prepared remarks said. I mean, we still have foreign exchange that is negatively impacting us in the third quarter. And we do feel confident that we can continue to offset the tariff pressures, again like we said in the third quarter, fourth quarter and back half of the year.

Our next question comes from Brooke Roche.

Morning and thank you for taking our question. Ernie, as pricing in the industry has begun to increase, are you seeing an acceleration of market share gains as consumers look for value at TJX? What are your latest thoughts on pricing as you move into fall and holiday? Are you looking to maintain the percent gaps?

Will you selectively raise prices in this inflationary environment? Thank you.

Great questions, Brooke. And obviously your time is quite appropriate based on what's going on in the world around us. We have, again, this is one of those funky situations where we don't top down dictate prices. So we don't go on with the strategy that we're going to raise price per se. And in fact, and I think I've gone through this a few times, we kind of use other retailers around us, they're out the door pricing, and our buyers work it backwards.

So they look at what the out the door pricing is around and then we say, yes, and by the way, this was part of your question. Are we going to our pricing percentage gap, is that going to change or not? So this is where the art form comes in and the secret sauce. So we don't go by an exact percentage because sometimes on a say you have a women's top, for example, that we think the right phenomenal value on that is $19.99 and that top is being sold or that top's retail went up in another store and their out the door sale price is $35 and maybe we could go to $25 We may not go because, and this is the art form, because in our mix, we possibly have made so many other great buys with all of the availability that's out there that we have to know that buyer says I have to compete in my own mix now for the customer. So then that's why it's absolutely a deal by deal, SKU by SKU, brand by brand situation.

I don't know if that pricing in that case, the pricing percent gap might be higher or if we had to go up on that retail because of we can because the retails around us went up, maybe the percent gap is back to the same as where it was before. So I never broad brush that we have a strategy overall on that because I know our buyers are doing it deal by deal. One of the strengths of our buying teams is they are aggressively comp shopping all of the competition, whether it's online, brick and mortar, vertical brands, department stores, specialty stores. And so, I give them a lot of credit by the way, we've been navigating in the tariff environment by just staying simple and pure to that model. The other thing I'd point out, it's easy to forget is that remember, ninety year give or take, we're dealing the bulk, vast bulk of maybe 90% of what we buy, there's third parties and we're not the direct importer.

So that's why our buyers can really pretty much just negotiate off the retail and work it backwards, because we're not starting with this is what we're paying and those goods aren't in other retails. We have to just mark it up off of what we're paying. So does that make sense?

And Brooke, the other thing I would add to that is that our customer surveys continue to show that we're continuing to offering exceptional value to the customer.

Yes, very strong percept. If anything, our perception on value of our customers has improved over the last couple of years. So I mean, you're asking you are so on to the right question though, because this is really motherhood and apple pie to us in terms of what we concentrate on. Did we answer that, Brooke?

Our next question comes from Lorraine Hutchinson.

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to build on Brook's pricing question. Was pricing a key factor in your tariff mitigation in 2Q in a comp driver? And how has the customer reacted to some of these higher price points?

Sure. Lorraine, great questions also, it goes hand in hand with that.

I mean, for TJX transactions continue to drive the comp. For Marmaxx, it was basket and transactions.

I think you're finding that our margins are healthy. Couple of things, one is please don't underestimate, I want to emphasize that tariff costs were higher and they were a headwind for us in Q2 and year over year, just in the end a little bit lower than we had expected. And so that we had a bit of a savings there. We also, because of this environment, I would say the retail adjustments based on what the out the door happened in pockets, I don't think there was as much of that as there was our merchants taking advantage of the market opportunities, which allowed us to, in many cases, buy better to help offset the tariffs that way on the market goods, if that makes sense, Lorraine. In other words, we were getting more hit on the tariffs directly on our own direct imports, but that's a small portion of our total.

So our buyers did a very good job on taking advantage of the mark in terms of market excess inventory by category, back to the flexibility there. We're also we manage we're able to manage our markdowns efficiently, which also helps with our merchandise margin. And one team I'd like to give a lot of credit to is our planning and allocation teams. They are sometimes the unsung heroes because I'm always talking about rightfully so having the right goods. So we tend to talk I tend to talk about the buyers and the merchandise manager who are doing a phenomenal job in this environment.

But our planning and allocation division is amazing and that applies to every division we're in, whether it's Canada, Marmaxx, HomeGoods, Sierra, Europe, Australia, every planning and allocation division is so good at balancing our mixes by category, family of business, literally by district, by store. And so what happens and we keep getting better and better at it. So what happens there, we're able to manage our drive our sales, that's back to answering the consistency question that I think Matt had asked. And at the same time, our merchandise margin by saving on markdowns by flowing the right amount of goods to the right stores. So I think that's been a key component also.

But taking advantage of market opportunities, I think, has allowed us to do the bulk of our dealing with the tariffs, which are still a headwind no matter what. They're still there.

Our next question comes from John Kernan.

Hey, good morning. Congrats on a great quarter.

So Ernie, some of the data we look at and other folks look at showed a nice acceleration in traffic. It's back to school picked up in mid to late July and then through August. How would you characterize the comp progression throughout the quarter? I got a quick follow-up. Thank you.

I I take you through that. We started the quarter strong as we said in our opening remarks last quarter. June, there was a little bit of weather that negatively impacted us, but we came throughout of June even stronger in July. And like we said in the remarks today, we entered this quarter with strong sales.

Yes. So John, to your question, we had a little bit of, I guess you'd call it a little bit of a lull in the middle of the quarter. Other than that, Strong. If I leave everyone with nothing else after this call, it's our balance and consistency seems to be the hallmark of this quarter. And again, the way we try to manage the business as we try to avoid any major ups and downs and fortunately this quarter represented that.

Yes. And then John, just a quick follow-up. Obviously, nice upside to pretax margin this quarter on a 4% comp. Is there any change to the rule of every 100 basis points upside of same store sales can give you 10 or so basis points flow through to the bottom line. It seems like you've over the last few years, you've generally outperformed that. Curious if that

generally what it is for every point in comp, we would expect to get 10 to 20 basis points on the bottom line. And that's we feel that going forward, that's what you should model.

All right, great. Thank you. John, I want you to know that John Klinger says that to me all the time, just so you know. When

I ask certain similar questions, I get the same answer.

Hey, thanks guys. Ernie, I think you mentioned consistency a couple of times, I think, related to your income demographic performance. Anything else that you can give, any more detail you could share, higher income demos versus lower income? And maybe just to build on that also, just regional differences. There's also a lot of question marks around the border stores, any comments you can make about how those stores are performing?

Sure. John and I both talked to this. Paul, mean, great question. I'll start off with talking about we look at this all of the time consistently because of A, yes, consistency and balance. Really here the word is balance across all the different age groups and income demographic groups.

So our marketing team and other team that has really equipped us, I think to take a strategic approach, even our creative by the way on the marketing campaigns we have going right now is aimed at a wide age and income demographic group, which not all marketing does for the different retailers. So we have and as also remember, we do always talk about in our merchandise mix going after good, better, best. Our marketing, we are very good at being balanced across the different age and income groups relative to we won't give you the exact numbers, but relative to The U. S. General population, we are very balanced in that respect.

And if anything, our focus has been and you've heard this before from us, we have had a focus, I think this is one of your questions on acquiring the younger age group as we go forward here and we have been doing that for the last number of years. And even if I look at across our divisions in the new customer base, which again tends to be a smaller number, but our new customer base skews younger than the current customer base, which is good. And our current customer base also skews a little bit younger than the general population. So this has been Yes.

I mean, it's the other thing is, I mean, we're giving the customers more reasons to come into our stores, the consumables that we offer that give a customer a reason to come in and likely find something else in the store that they like. And as Arne talks about all the time is the good, better, best mix and appealing really the reason why we appeal to such a broad customer demographic. As far as the border stores, so we look at our Canadian border. The nice thing is we've got stores on both sides. We have seen and again, we're not talking about a lot of stores that we have on our borders.

So it's really hardly any impact to the total. But we did see a little less cross border shopping. So more of the Canadians were staying home and shopping winners versus coming over and shopping TJ Maxx. But again, very, very small impact.

We do also see a little lift on the same side of our Canada stores, Yes, those sales just, you know, they just transfer. They transfer over.

Again, we're not seeing a large impact. If you look at our sales across the different geographies, it was pretty consistent across all the geographies in the country.

Again, we're not seeing a large impact. We see an impact when if there's some natural disasters, for example, and even in the news media gets more viewership in a region. And so, for example, in California, we would see a little dip when that was going on. And that's what John and I typically are seeing. We're not seeing anything really radical along the Mexico border at all.

And usually the weather like we saw in June, when the weather subsides, we see things bounce back.

Yeah, and also, Paul, that regional, I know you're kind of on the regional question, is we back to the planning and allocate, our planning and allocation division, they're also good at this. If we end up in a district, an area of say a dozen stores or a region or in a certain geography where there's something going on, our planning allocation with our store ops division, they're fantastic at reacting very quickly. Field organization, if there's something on you, this happens. So John and I are talking at a high level, but there is a lot of work that our teams in the field in planning allocation do to compensate for any strange regional or local market.

Yes. We turn our stores roughly once a month. Right. We do have the ability to react quickly.

Which I think goes back to the consistent that all of these things help our consistency, because we're able to then take goods and say, oh, I'll ship it to these other areas that are doing better. It helps offset the area that's a little weak, but we've been very happy with the balance of healthy business across the entire country and internationally, as you can see, very pleased with Canada and Europe.

Our next question comes from Dana Telsey.

Hi. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on the results. You think about the merchandise Hello? Can you hear me okay?

TJX (TJX) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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