California Begins Enforcing New Privacy Law (mediapost.com)

HarperCollins Publishers announced a global commitment to becoming carbon neutral for its direct operational emissions in 2022. In order to meet this goal, HarperCollins has appointed award-winning sustainability strategy consultancy Brite Green to develop and implement effective sustainability strategies and targets. HarperCollins will initially focus on Scope 1 and 2 emissions, targeting on-site electricity and fuel energy usage. As part of the News Corp Global Environmental Initiative, HarperCollins is also working toward a goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions across its operational and supply chain by 2050 or earlier, in line with the Paris Agreement. “As a leading global publishing company, we have a responsibility to mitigate the impact of our business on the environment and to identify ways to improve the sustainability of our industry,” said Brian Murray, President and CEO, HarperCollins Publishers. “We have been successfully reducing our emissions and becoming carbon neutral in Scopes 1 and 2 is the next step in the process. We will continue to work toward our long-term targets and seek to reduce carbon emissions and their associated costs from our business overall.”

As ACMA attorneys Martin Eisenstein and Nat Bessey wrote in Part One) of their two-part Legal Corner series to members last month (unlocked version here for non-members too), a major issue for the industry was the effort of the Massachusetts Department of Taxation to apply the Supreme Court’s ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair retroactively and assess many ACMA members and other remote merchants retroactively for sales tax liabilities for periods prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Wayfair. Brann & Isaacson is proud to announce that today we received a favorable, and unanimous, decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court invalidating the Department’s assessment. The Court found that absent a physical presence in Massachusetts, the Department did not have the authority to assess sales taxes based upon Internet contacts. The Court held that cookies/apps/content delivery networks do not constitute physical presence. This is a significant victory for the industry and a great holiday present. Thank you to all ACMA members and other companies for your support in this effort. link to full report: https://catalogmailers.org/member-exclusive-acmas-legal-corner-state-and-local-agencies-are-at-it-again-in-sales-tax-actions-pt-1-of-2-2/

Third Quarter Highlights: *Positive EBITDA one quarter sooner than expected. *Strong liquidity position with approximately $1.6 billion in cash and approximately $3 billion of untapped capacity in the company’s asset-based credit facility. *Digital sales grew 27% over third quarter 2019. Digital sales penetrated at 38% of total owned comparable sales. *Comparable sales down 21.0% on an owned basis and down 20.2% on an owned plus licensed basis, due to continued stores recovery and continued growth of digital business. *Inventory down 29% from third quarter 2019. The company exited the quarter in a clean inventory position. *Gross margin of 35.6% compared to 23.6% in the second quarter of 2020, an improvement of approximately 12 percentage points. The improvement was driven by disciplined inventory management, better sell through of both full-price and clearance merchandise and lower clearance markdowns.