Yahoo Finance's Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Emily McCormick discuss Target's recent announcement to postpone store remodeling projects and withdraw financial guidance for the first quarter and full-year 2020.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Let's move over to Emily McCormick now for a look at Target earnings out today. Emily, a mixed quarter. Looks like online continuing to be the big driver there for Target.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Right. So what we're really focusing on with Target here is the guidance and the update that they provided regarding some of their store-remodeling plans and the fact that they withdrew their first-quarter and full-year guidance due to unpredictability surrounding the coronavirus environment. They also suspended their share-buyback program.

And what the company had to say here is that it was originally going to be remodeling some 300 stores for the year. It's now planning to just complete 130 or essentially just wrap up those remodels that had already been in progress. It also had originally been planning to open 36 smaller new stores. Now going to be just opening up 20 new locations. It's going to delay the rest of these as well as these store remodels until 2021.

Target also provided an update on its comparable same-store sales growth for March. That actually surged 20% over last year. That's being driven by a 50% jump in comparable sales for essentials and food and beverage. Now it's important to note here though that those are lower-margin categories for the company. It did see a 20% drop in apparel, which is higher margins. That's something that could weigh on overall profitability.

And we do have shares of Target down about 6/10 of a percent here in early trading.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, and Emily, I was able to catch up with Target chairman and CEO Brian Cornell last night on a media call. I asked him, one, do you think this is a prolonged type of recession? He was unsure on that. But when you're seeing a lot of trade down [INAUDIBLE] goods as opposed to apparel, you really get the sense that consumers are under a lot of pressure.

And then secondarily, I asked him when toilet paper-- yes, toilet paper, when will that be in stock? I [INAUDIBLE] Target for three weeks. He tells me a lot of manufacturers are working very hard to get the stuff back on the shelves, but no doubt he has seen a lot of hoarding in his stores.