Family Dollar will close about 370 stores and cut jobs owing to increased retail competition, the North Carolina-based company announced.
The closings represent about 4.6 percent of the discount store operator’s 8,100 locations and will reduce annual operating expenses by $40 million to $45 million, beginning in fiscal third quarter.
Family Dollar has not disclosed which stores will be closed or the number of jobs that will be lost.
The low-budget chain store has increasingly faced competition from other dollar-store chains like Dollar General and Dollar Tree and rival discount big-box retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart.
Chief Executive Officer Howard Levine said fiscal second-quarter results “did not meet our expectations,” as the company faced more competition and a more cash-strapped customer. Sales fell 6.1 percent to $2.72 billion in the quarter ended March 1, Bloomberg News reported.
