NEW YORK, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. department store chain Macy's said on Monday that an employee had "intentionally" misstated and hidden up to 154 million U.S. dollars in delivery expenses over the past few years, forcing the retailer to delay a much-anticipated earnings report that Wall Street uses to gauge the strength of holiday shopping.
The retail giant rushed to release an abridged set of financial results, which were a mixed bag, with signs of weakness and pockets of strength, reported The New York Times about the development.
Macy's said it had found the accounting error while preparing its results for the quarter, which ended Nov. 2. The results had been set to be released on Tuesday. An investigation was opened, and the employee, who was responsible for small package delivery expense accounting, is no longer with the company, Macy's said. The investigation has not identified involvement by any other employee.
In the same three-year period of the accounting issue in which the employee hid the money, the retailer said it had recorded about 4.36 billion dollars in delivery expenses, the cost to a business in order to transport goods to customers, according to the report.
Macy's shares fell more than 8 percent in premarket trading after the surprise preliminary report. But it quickly pared back some of its losses, as investors tried to make sense of the mixed results along with the company's reassurance that the employee error, which Macy's said spanned the fourth quarter of 2021 through the most recent quarter, did not affect its cash flow management or vendor payments.
Macy's sales in the third quarter fell 2.4 percent -- below analysts' expectations -- to 4.74 billion dollars. The company's overall sales were dragged down by weak performance at Macy's stores and its digital business.
