(Filed Under Financial and General Interest News). Limited Brands, Inc. (now known as L Brands, Inc.), which is parent to Victoria’s Secret, is actually cutting the number of North American Victoria’s Secret stores by 20 in 2013, while at the same time increasing the number of Pink stores by 49. It also reported increased company-wide sales in July compared to last year.

Net sales were “$678.4 million for the four weeks ended Aug. 3, 2013, compared to net sales of $649.8 million for the four weeks ended July 28, 2012. The company reported a comparable store sales increase of 3 percent for the four weeks ended Aug. 3, 2013, compared to the four weeks ended Aug. 4, 2012.”

In a second quarter earnings presentation in mid-August, L Brands displayed charts that showed an apparent change in the way it counts (or names) its Victoria Secret and Pink stores in the U.S., as well as an expected significant increase in the number of Pink shops and a decline in the number of Victoria’s Secret stores by the end of 2013.

Earlier this year, in the L Brands 2012 annual report, which included plans for 2013, the company said that in North America “In 2013, we plan to increase our square footage at Victoria’s Secret by about 3.5% through expansions of existing stores and the opening of approximately 50 new stores.” BODY remarked at the time that this was significant because (while the numbers did fluctuate in the interim) at the end of 2012 the company had almost exactly the same number of Victoria’s Secret stores, 1,019, as it did at the end of 2007, 1,020.

But in the new August charts, L Brands indicated that at the start of 2013 it had only 985 Victoria’s Secret stores in the U.S. and 16 in Canada. And, instead of projecting an increase in the number of Victoria’s Secret stores by the end of the year, the company showed that it will only have 974 Victoria’s Secret stores in the U.S. and 24 in Canada. Thus, instead of increasing the number of Victoria’s Secret stores in North America, the number will actually decrease from 1019 to 999.

Conversely, L Brands indicated that it will expand the number of Pink stores from the 34 it had at the start of this year, by 49, to 83 by the end of the year. The number of Pink stores, 10, will remain the same in Canada.

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Published 08-30-2013 by Nick Monjo