EarningsM · ROST · BURL•13 min read

Bloomingdale's +11% Just Topped Every U.S. Off-Pricers — Macy's Premium Bet Pays, But Holiday Is the Real Test

Macy's reported Q2 2026 comp sales of +2.7% and lifted full-year EPS guidance to $2.15–$2.35, but the real headline is that Bloomingdale's alone posted +11.3% — beating Ross Stores at +10%, TJX Companies at +4% and Burlington Stores at +2%. The premium-tier outperformance runs counter to the trade-down narrative that powered off-price all year, and now Macy's has to prove the Bloomingdale's engine holds through a holiday where consumers may finally reorder spending toward value. A one-time $116M IEEPA tariff refund — about $0.05 of the new full-year EPS — props up the optics; underlying namesake comp was just +1.1%, and Kohl's just printed -0.9% on the same back-to-school window.

Published Sep 10, 2026Updated Sep 10, 2026

Net sales

$4.866B

+1.1% YoY, Q2 ended Aug 1, 2026

Total revenue

$5.059B

Includes $193M of credit card and media-network other revenue

GAAP net income

$169M

Doubled from $84M a year earlier

Diluted EPS

$0.62

Beat $0.37 consensus by $0.25; vs. $0.31 prior-year quarter

On September 10, 2026, Macy's handed investors the cleanest premium-vs-discount split of the year. Q2 comp sales rose 2.7% — the fifth consecutive quarter of growth — but inside the envelope, Bloomingdale's alone delivered +11.3%, its highest-ever second-quarter sales volume. The read-across to Ross Stores, Burlington Stores and TJX Companies is uncomfortable for the trade-down thesis that has dominated 2026 retail conversation: the premium banner inside a mid-tier department store just posted the single best comp among major U.S. apparel retailers this quarter.

The headline numbers

Bloomingdale's delivered the single best comp in U.S. retail

Net sales

$4.866B

+1.1% YoY, Q2 ended Aug 1, 2026

Total revenue

$5.059B

Includes $193M of credit card and media-network other revenue

GAAP net income

$169M

Doubled from $84M a year earlier

Diluted EPS

$0.62

Beat $0.37 consensus by $0.25; vs. $0.31 prior-year quarter

Comparable sales

+2.7%

Fifth consecutive quarter of growth; Reimagine 200 stores +1.9%

Bloomingdale's comp

+11.3%

Highest Q2 sales volume in brand history; second straight double-digit quarter

Bluemercury comp

+6.2%

Sixth straight quarter of positive growth

Gross margin

41.5%

+180 bps YoY, including net IEEPA tariff-refund benefit

The earnings beat was structural, not financial engineering. Bloomingdale's has now strung together consecutive double-digit quarters — +10.2% in Q1 and +11.3% in Q2 — while the namesake banner scraped out +1.1%. That divergence is the entire story: Macy's management has stopped trying to make the mid-tier flagship compete on price with off-price, and has instead funneled capital into Bloomingdale's assortment, store experience and exclusive brand partnerships.

Macy's lifted full-year FY2026 guidance for the second consecutive quarter: net sales to $21.68B–$21.83B (from $21.5B–$21.75B) and adjusted EPS to $2.15–$2.35 (from $2.00–$2.20). Roughly $0.05 of the EPS raise is a one-time IEEPA tariff refund; the rest is underlying operating performance.

The retail hierarchy

The premium-vs-discount hierarchy just got scrambled

Comparable sales — same 13-week period ending ~Aug 1, 2026
Retailer	Channel	Q2 comp	FY comp guide	FY EPS guide
Bloomingdale's (within Macy's)	Premium dept.	+11.3%	—	—
Ross Stores	Off-price	+10%	+5–6% (H2 6–7% Q3, 4–5% Q4)	$8.61–$8.77
TJX Companies	Off-price	+4%	~+6% raised	Above plan
Macy's namesake	Mid-tier dept.	+1.1%	+1.0–1.5%	$2.15–$2.35
Burlington Stores	Off-price	+2%	+3–4%	$11.77–$11.97
Kohl's	Mid-tier dept.	(0.9%)	(1.5%) to flat	$4.75–$4.95

Bloomingdale's +11.3% beats Ross Stores +10%, TJX Companies +4% and Burlington Stores +2% — and it does so inside a company whose mid-tier namesake is barely growing at +1.1% while Kohl's is shrinking at -0.9%. The four-off-price-blocs-have-all-the-momentum narrative quietly breaks down at the premium end of the mall.

Bloomingdale's has added Chloé, Burberry, Bottega Veneta, Jacquemus, Khaite, Roger Vivier, Skims and Zimmermann to its assortment in 2025–26, pulling wallet share from Saks Global (which has been closing stores).
Macy's namesake sales growth of just +1.1% confirms the company is not trying to win the same shopper as off-price — it's bifurcating the brand, with Bloomingdale's as the growth engine and Reimagine 200 stores as the cash-flow anchor.
The Reimagine 200 cohort — roughly half the fleet, with remodeled merchandising, better service and tighter assortments — posted +1.9%, an improvement from +1.6% last quarter, suggesting the capital reinvestment in the banner is still compounding.
Bluemercury at +6.2% extends a six-quarter streak of positive comps, evidence that the beauty flywheel at Macy's is independent of both apparel cycles and tariff noise.

The tariff-refund asterisk

Tariff refunds are brightening every retailer's quarter — and the half-life is short

After the February 2026 Supreme Court ruling against IEEPA tariffs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began processing refunds in April. Macy's, Ross Stores and Burlington Stores all booked meaningful one-time tailwinds this quarter — and they will not recur.

IEEPA tariff refunds received in Q2 FY2026
Retailer	Refund amount	EPS benefit	Planned reinvestment
Macy's	$116M	~$0.05 full-year	$96M reinvested in customer experience / turnaround
Ross Stores	$253M	~$0.60 (Q2 only)	Not disclosed; lifted H2 comp guide
Burlington Stores	$55M	Neutral to FY (offset by reinvestment)	~40% Q3, ~60% Q4 price reinvestment

Macy's chose to plough $96M of its $116M refund back into store experience rather than temporary price cuts — a stance CEO Tony Spring called a preference for \"long-term reinvestment over short-term price reductions.\" That decision matters because it shields gross margin from the same comparison pitfall Burlington Stores is already navigating in H2.

The accounting optics differ widely. Ross Stores recognized $253M in its P&L and booked 405 bps of operating margin from refunds in Q2 alone, lifting reported EPS to $2.66 — roughly $0.60 of which is non-recurring. Macy's kept its refund smaller and split it between Q2 recognition and H2 reinvestment, which gives the underlying comp and margin a cleaner read. Burlington Stores, by contrast, took $55M in Q2 and said it would re-spend it on price in Q3 and Q4 — and the stock still fell 7.6% on the day on a modest revenue miss, evidence that one-time tailwinds no longer wow anyone.

The holiday test

Holiday is where the premium bet either compounds or cracks

The NRF projects 2026 total U.S. retail sales of $5.6T, +4.4% YoY, but PWC's 2026 holiday outlook calls for gift spending down ~2% versus 2025 — a consumer that is still buying necessities but trading down within gift categories.
Ross Stores raised its Q3 comp guide to +6–7% and Q4 to +4–5% — explicitly counting on the trade-down cohort through year-end. If that materializes, Bloomingdale's +11.3% has to give some of it back in November and December.
Macy's has not yet given Q3 or Q4 comp guidance, but the FY raise to +1.0–1.5% comp sales implies modest back-half comp of roughly flat to +1%, leaving meaningful room for an upside surprise if Bloomingdale's momentum extends into the gift-giving window.
TJX Companies lifted its full-year comp guide to ~+6% in mid-August — a higher base than Ross Stores or Burlington Stores, but with the same risk: if Bloomingdale's holds +10%+, off-price growth has to come from somewhere, and the most likely source is the same middle-income shopper the department-store mid-tier is fighting to keep.

The cleanest read on the holiday split comes from the gap between Bloomingdale's +11.3% and Macy's namesake +1.1%: a 10-point spread inside the same company, in the same quarter, in the same stores, against the same consumer. That spread is the strongest evidence yet that the U.S. apparel consumer in 2026 is bifurcating — premium on, mid-tier flat, mid-tier-without-a-premium-flagship down — rather than uniformly trading down.

Adjacent names and watch list

The names that matter around this print

Citigroup is the structural second-order beneficiary of this story. Macy's Star Rewards credit card program runs through Citi Retail Services, with a long-term extension in place through 2030. Q1 FY2026 credit-card net revenue at Macy's rose 11.7% to $172M, and full-year FY2025 credit-card revenue grew 24.6% to $669M — a roughly 3% contribution to total net sales that compounds with comp growth and tends to hold up better than merchandise margin in a soft consumer environment.

Macy's Media Network — the retail-media arm — delivered $38M of net revenue in Q1 FY2026 and an estimated $34M in Q2, an under-monetized ad inventory relative to the audience Macy's reaches in-store and online.
Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a new position of roughly 7.35M shares of Macy's in Q1 2026 — a vote of confidence from the most-watched value investor, and one that sets a notional floor around the $20.62 average cost disclosed in the 13F.
The Reimagine 200 cohort is now over half the fleet; the company is approaching the end of its \"Bold New Chapter\" three-year turnaround, and FY2027 will be the first year without store closures as a tailwind, raising the bar on organic comp execution.
Kohl's cut its FY2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $4.75–$4.95 (from $5.15–$5.45) even after a tariff-refund-flattered Q2 print, a reminder that department-store comps without a premium halo keep eroding.

Bottom line

The premium vote is back — but the bar just moved to holiday

Macy's bought back the right to ask the question every investor wanted to ask in 2026: is there still room in the U.S. consumer wallet for premium at scale? Bloomingdale's +11.3% answered yes — loudly. But Macy's namesake +1.1% and Kohl's -0.9% on the same calendar window say the answer is conditional, and the condition is brand differentiation. Holiday is where it gets tested.

Near-term (days–quarters): watch Macy's October sales update, the Q3 print in mid-November, and the NRF holiday forecast for Nov-Dec 2026. A Bloomingdale's comp holding above +8% in Q3 would meaningfully de-risk the FY raise.
Long-term (1–3 years): the open question is whether Macy's can compound Bloomingdale's at a premium multiple while it closes out the Reimagine 200 capital cycle. If it does, the FY2026 EPS raise is the start of a re-rating; if Bloomingdale's flattens with the holiday slowdown, the namesake's +1.1% won't be enough to carry the multiple.
Main risks: a sharper consumer downshift in Q4 that flips trade-down back to off-price, a tariff refund that turns out to be smaller than initial estimates, and execution slippage on the Reimagine 200 tail as that cohort ages.
Watch: Macy's Q3 EPS consensus (currently around $0.30) and Ross Stores Q3 comp delivery — both will tell investors whether the premium vote or the trade-down trade has the louder voice into year-end.

Stocks to watch around this print

MMacy'sM--

--Vol --

Bullish

Bloomingdale's +11.3% comp single-handedly drove the FY raise and is the cleanest premium-tailwind print of the quarter.
FY2026 EPS guide raised to $2.15–$2.35 from $2.00–$2.20; only ~$0.05 of the raise is a one-time IEEPA tariff refund.
Berkshire's disclosed ~7.35M-share position creates a notional floor near $20.62 average cost.
Holiday (Q3 update in November) is the next catalyst — Bloomingdale's comp above +8% would de-risk the FY raise.

RRoss StoresROST--

--Vol --

Mixed

Q2 EPS of $2.66 included ~$0.60 of non-recurring IEEPA tariff-refund benefit — the underlying beat is real but smaller than reported.
Updated FY EPS guide of $8.61–$8.77 bakes in the refund; Q3 comp guide of +6–7% and Q4 of +4–5% is the cleaner read on underlying demand.
If Bloomingdale's holds premium share into the holiday, Ross Stores loses its cleanest trade-down narrative and multiple compresses.

BBurlington StoresBURL--

--Vol --

Bearish

Q2 comp of just +2% (vs +5% prior year) is the slowest of the off-price trio; tariff-refund EPS lift is offset by planned reinvestment that compresses H2 margins.
Stock fell 7.6% post-print on a small revenue miss — first off-price name to break the trade-down narrative.
FY EPS guide of $11.77–$11.97 is up only 16–18% YoY — slower growth than Ross Stores and well behind TJX Companies.

TTJX CompaniesTJX--

--Vol --

Mixed

Q2 comp +4% with adj EPS up 11% to $1.22; full-year comp guide raised to ~+6%, the highest of any off-pricer.
At ~30x P/E, the off-price leader trades at a premium that requires continued mid-single-digit comps — Macy's premium thesis is a direct competitive risk.
If Bloomingdale's captures incremental luxury wallet share through holiday, TJX's home/luxury adjacencies face the most pressure.

KKohl'sKSS--

--Vol --

Bearish

Q2 comp -0.9% on net sales of $3.32B; adjusted EPS of $0.56 beat but FY EPS guide cut to $4.75–$4.95 from $5.15–$5.45.
No premium halo and no Bloomingdale's equivalent — Kohl's is the cleanest mid-tier-department-store short as the premium-vs-discount split widens.
Stock fell ~6% post-print despite the EPS beat, confirming the market is no longer rewarding tariff-refund-flattered quarters.

CCitigroupC--

--Vol --

Watch

Macy's credit card program runs through Citi Retail Services under a long-term extension through 2030 — Q1 FY2026 card revenue rose 11.7% to $172M at Macy's, a clean read on Citi's co-brand portfolio health.
FY2025 card revenue at Macy's grew 24.6% to $669M; Citi is the structural beneficiary as Bloomingdale's comp extends.
Watch for any renegotiation chatter around 2027 — a renewal at better economics for Macy's would compress Citi's take rate.