Kohl's Corporation (NYSE: KSS) stock imploded Thursday morning -- down 26.3% through 10:15 a.m. ET -- after reporting a big net loss where investors had expected a profit.

Heading into the first quarter, analysts forecast Kohl's would earn $0.04 per share on sales of $3.3 billion. Both predictions represented declines from Kohl's Q1 2023 report, but the news was even worse than expected. Kohl's didn't earn any profit at all but lost $0.24 per share. Its sales were only $3.2 billion.

Kohl's did raise its gross profit margin by half a percentage point to 39.5% and worked off 13% of its inventory -- a neat trick for a brick-and-mortar retailer: growing margins while unloading stale inventory! Kohl's also trimmed selling, general, and administration (SGA) spending by 0.8%.

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Source Fool.com