Continued strength of the consumer electronics and home office categories and the recent substantial weakness in major appliances accelerated our decision to reformat all existing superstores.

230

We believe our guaranteed express pickup offering, which enabled customers to shop for Christmas gifts over the Web through Christmas Eve, was a competitive advantage during the month.

218

In December we saw strength in a broad number of categories, but we saw significant strength in flat panel televisions, MP3 players and accessories, notebook computers, video game hardware, navigation products and imaging products.

212

Our record December sales results are further evidence of the great work being done by Associates throughout our company. More effective advertising, improved inventory in-stock levels and a tightly integrated multi-channel offering helped drive the year-over-year improvement. A strong increase in the average ticket size more than offset a reduction in traffic, compared with the prior year.

191

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Our donation is part of Circuit City's broader effort to help the victims recover.

162

We view the additional advertising expense during the quarter as an important investment in building the Circuit City brand. Since our retail stores team held labor expense relatively flat on a dollar basis, we were able to gain significant leverage on our higher level of sales as we continued work to optimize the labor model in our stores.

152

We remain dissatisfied in the overall sales performance of our Circuit City business, ... no new trends on which to base any charges in earnings expectations.

139

The first-quarter comparable stores sales growth was slightly ahead of our expectations, with sales exceeding our outlook early in the quarter, but softening during the final month.

135

Our record December sales results are further evidence of the great work being done by associates throughout our company. They executed an effective holiday season plan, which we believe translated into a superior customer experience in all of our sales channels.

78