Kohl’s CEO says company will focus on optimizing its existing store base

The CEO of Kohl’s signaled that the company isn’t planning on closing additional stores this year after it shuttered more than two dozen locations last year.

Kohl’s closed 27 stores in 15 states in 2025 as the department store chain looked to get on better financial footing amid declining sales, and the Wisconsin-headquartered company brought in Michael Bender to serve as CEO in November. 

Bender said on a call after Kohl’s released its quarterly earnings last week that the company isn’t planning to proceed with “any sort of grand plan of saying we’re taking stores out or adding stores at this point.”

“The focus for us is actually on optimizing what we already have, and we’ll be focused on making sure that we continue to push the store’s productivity as far as we can going forward,” Bender said.

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Kohl’s has about 1,150 locations and Bender said that over 90% of those stores are profitable, so the company’s annual reviews of how its locations are performing will come from a “hygiene perspective to make sure that those stores are positioned in the right spot and delivering what we need.” 

“We will look at stores like we do on an annual basis, like I said. And to the extent that there are opportunities for us to either relocate, those are opportunities for us, we can do that. But no major change in the store base expectation at this point,” Bender said.

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Kohl’s has struggled in recent years amid stiff competition in the retail space from companies like e-commerce giant Amazon and discount competitors like Ross Stores.

Jill Timm, Kohl’s CFO, said that the company is focusing on driving traffic both in stores and digitally. She said the company saw solid digital traffic in the fourth quarter and is making changes to how it manages inventory in stores to give customers more reasons to shop in stores.

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The company expects that its full-year sales will be flat to 2% lower, compared with analysts’ estimates of a 0.7% decline to $14.85 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.

In the most recent quarter, Kohl’s posted sales of $4.97 billion – just below analysts’ estimates of $5.03 billion.

Kohl’s stock rose over 3% in Thursday morning trading, though it’s down 6.89% in the past five days. Shares are down over 41% year to date, but have risen more than 42% in the past year.

Reuters contributed to this report.