Print Book Sales Up 4.7% Last Week, Driven by New Adult Titles (publishersweekly.com)

REI Co-op released its 2020 financials and annual impact report, highlighting strong financial performance and its values-based approach to leading through a global crisis—and beyond. Despite unforeseen challenges in 2020, the co-op made bold investments in the future of its business: selling its headquarters buildings to imagine an entirely new future of office work, taking the co-op carbon neutral, investing in retail pay, making a commitment to racial equity that will impact every area of the company, and rolling out innovative new offerings like virtual outfitting and Curbside Pickup within a matter of weeks. “We entered 2020 with incredible momentum, after more than a decade of record growth. Then, the entire world came to a halt. We regrounded ourselves in our values, making choices that at times came at great cost to our business. But we took the long view and continued to put our people first, quickly pivoting to find new ways of serving our customers and community,” said REI President and CEO Eric Artz. “That approach turned out to be the right thing for our people and for our business, and allowed us to enter 2021 not just in a position of financial strength, but proud of who we were when the times were least certain.” The co-op reported no profits in 2020 but ended the year in a strong cash position and debt-free, after investing millions in its impact work: combatting the climate crisis, fighting for racial equity and supporting its network of nonprofit partners. Now REI is launching the next chapter of that work, inviting its broader co-op community to take action.

For the thirteen weeks ended August 1, 2020 (the "second quarter"), the Company reported: *A net loss of $46.8 million a material improvement over the thirteen weeks ended May 2, 2020 (the "first quarter"). The second quarter net loss includes the after-tax impact of inventory write-offs of $8.0 million. For the thirteen weeks ended August 3, 2019 ("last year's second quarter"), the net loss was $2.3 million. *Net sales were $306.2 million, an improvement of 9.2% from the first quarter, reflecting the benefit of strong digital sales and store reopenings. Sales decreased approximately 39.8% from last year's second quarter, reflecting disruptions related to the pandemic, including the continuation of temporary store closures and limited hours during the second quarter, as well as the impact of 74 net permanent store closures since last year's second quarter, partially offset by double-digit growth in digital performance. For the twenty-six weeks ended August 1, 2020, the Company reported: *A net loss of $225.1 million compared to net loss of $0.3 million for the twenty-six weeks ended August 3, 2019.

In FY 2021, the Postal Service had a net loss from operations of $2.7 billion, a $0.9 billion improvement from FY 2020. The decrease in net operating losses for FY 2021 was primarily due to $4.0 billion more revenue than in FY 2020. When non-operating expenses are included, the Postal Service had a total net loss of $4.9 billion in FY 2021—an improvement of $4.2 billion compared to FY 2020. While the Postal Service realized an overall improvement in total net losses in FY 2021, continued losses have expanded the gap between the Postal Service’s assets and liabilities. Total assets at the end of FY 2021 were $46.4 billion versus total liabilities of $122.1 billion. A significant portion of the Postal Service’s liabilities was driven by unpaid retiree health benefit (RHB) liabilities totaling $57.0 billion at the end of FY 2021. The recent enactment of the Postal Service Reform Act removes this $57.0 billion liability of past due RHB obligations and eliminates annual payments for the RHB normal costs and the Retiree Health Benefits Fund amortization. Market Dominant revenue decreased in FY 2021 by $97 million or 0.2 percent from FY 2020. Increases in revenue per piece for overall Market Dominant products were not enough to offset declines in volume and fluctuation in mail mix and signal the severity of the effects of the pandemic during that time. In FY 2021, Market Dominant volume declined while package volumes rose as a result of continued growth in e-commerce that included record holiday volume. These changes in volume affected overall revenues and cost in addition to workforce and workhour changes in response to pandemic-related labor costs.