Even dollar stores are getting slammed by the retail theft crisis.
Dollar Generals shares tanked Thursday after the discounter provided a bleak outlook for the rest of the year because of rising thefts and weak consumer demand at its 19,000 stores nationwide.
The Tennessee-based company warned Wall Street that profits may plunge by as much as 34% compared to its previous forecast for an 8% decline to flat growth as cut its full-year profit and sales targets for the second time this year.
“Our revised guide is really a function of the slower transactions that we’re seeing, and higher expected shrink,” Dollar General CFO Kelly Dilts said on a call with analysts after the company reported quarterly earnings that fell short of Wall Street estimates.
The reference to “shrink” — an industry term for stolen or damaged goods — follows a troubling trend cited by other major retailers who have blamed the scourge of organized retail theft for impacting their bottom line.
Target has said it expects to lose $500 million because of theft at its stores.
Dollar Tree said in May that it would need to raise prices in some regions because of persistent shoplifting.
Dollar General’s gross profit as a percentage of net sales fell 126 basis points in the quarter as retail shrink worsened. It flagged $100 million in additional shrink headwinds since its last earnings call in June.
CEO Jeff Owen did not elaborate on the extent of the theft, instead pointing to still-stubborn inflation for shoppers feeling “financially constrained.
Dollar Generals core customers are feeling the acute pressure of the cost-of-living-crisis, echoed Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData, in a report Thursday.
Dollar General lowered its same store sales guidance to a decline of about 1% and 1% increase compared to its previous forecast of a 1% to 2% increase.
The companys comparable sales dropped by 1% in the second quarter ended Aug. 4 and the company expects a pileup of inventory to be a drag on its earnings for the rest of the year as it slashes prices on items that havent been selling.
The quarter “marks the fourth consecutive guide down for Dollar General, which admittedly creates further uncertainty if we are hitting the bottom yet,” said Raymond James analyst Bobby Griffin.
The stock nosedived down more than 12% Thursday to close at $138.59.
It has tracked a nearly three-and-a-half-year low, slumping as much as 18.2% to hit $128.96 — making it one of the worst performers on the S&P 500 index this year.
As inflation continued to batter shoppers this year, more customers flocked to Dollar General and its rival Dollar Tree among other big discounters.
But food and other essential items are less profitable for those stores as profit margins on food are anemic.
While we are not satisfied with our overall financial results, we made significant progress in the second quarter improving execution in our supply chain and our stores, as well as reducing our inventory growth rate and further strengthening our price position, Owen said in a statement.
A duo of Tesla shareholder-influencers tried to complete Elon Musk’s coast-to-coast self-driving ride that he claimed Tesla would be able to do in 2017 and they crashed before making it about 60 miles.
In 2016, Elon Musk infamously said that Tesla would complete a fully self-driving coast-to-coast drive between Los Angeles and New York by the end of 2017.
The idea was to livestream or film a full unedited drive coast-to-coast with the vehicle driving itself at all times.
We are in 2025 and Tesla never made that drive.
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Despite the many missed autonomous driving goals, many Tesla shareholders believe that the company is on the verge of delivering unsupervised self-driving following the rollout of its ‘Robotaxi’ fleet in Austin, which requires supervision from Tesla employees inside the vehicles, and improvements to its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) systems inside consumer vehicles, which is still only a level 2 driver assist system that requires driver attention at all times as per Tesla.
Two of these Tesla shareholders and online influencers attempted to undertake a coast-to-coast drive between San Diego, CA, and Jacksonville, FL, in a Tesla Model Y equipped with the latest FSD software update.
They didn’t make it out of California without crashing into easily avoidable road debris that badly damaged the Tesla Model Y:
In the video, you can see that the driver doesn’t have his hands on the steering wheel. The passenger spots the debris way ahead of time. There was plenty of time to react, but the driver didn’t get his hands on the steering wheel until the last second.
In a follow-up video, the two Tesla influencers confirmed that the Model Y had a broken sway bar bracket and damaged suspension components. The vehicle is also throwing out a lot of warnings.
They made it about 2.5% of the planned trip on Tesla FSD v13.9 before crashing the vehicle.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla shareholders used to discuss this somewhat rationally back in the day, but now that Tesla’s EV business is in decline and the stock price depends entirely on the self-driving and robot promises, they no longer do.
I recall when Musk himself used to say that when you reach 99% self-driving, it is when the “march of the 9s” begins, and you must achieve 99.999999999% autonomy to have a truly useful self-driving system. He admitted that this is the most challenging part as the real-world is unpredictable and hard to simulate – throwing a lot of challenging scenario at you, such as debris on the road.
That’s where Tesla is right now. The hard part has just started. And there’s no telling how long it will take to get there. If someone is telling you that they know, they are lying. I don’t know. My best estimate is approximately 2-3 years and a new hardware suite.
However, competition, mainly Waymo, began its own “march of the 9s” about five years ago.
Tesla is still years behind, and something like this drive by these two Tesla influencers proves it.
I was actually in a similar accident in a Tesla Model 3 back in 2020. I rented a Model 3 on Turo for a trip to Las Vegas from Los Angeles.
I ended up driving over a blown-out truck tire in the middle of the road like this. I was Autopilot, but I don’t know if the car saw it. I definitely saw it, but it was a bit late as I was following a truck that just drove over it. I had probably less than 2 seconds to react. I applied the brakes, but my choices were driving into a ditch on the right or into a car in the left lane.
I managed to reduce the force of the impact with the braking, but the vehicle jumped a bit like in this video. There wasn’t really any damage to the front, but the bottom cover was flapping down. I taped it together at the next gas station and I was able to continue the trip without much issue.
However, after returning it to the Turo owner and having the suspension damage evaluated by Tesla, the repair job was estimated to be roughly $10,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a similar situation with this accident.
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A Swedish team has precisely dated microbial life in Finland’s Lappajärvi crater. Isotopic traces show bacteria colonized the hydrothermal system just a few million years after the meteorite impact, thriving for millions of years. The finding suggests impact craters on Earth and Mars may provide lasting habitats for life.
Chrysler parent company Stellantis is calling its new, Intelligent Battery Integrated System (IBIS) system a breakthrough technology that will make future EVs lighter, more efficient, and quicker. Now, that “breakthrough” tech is now moving from concept to reality.
Co-developed with Saft, Sherpa Engineering, Université Paris-Saclay, and Institut Lafayette, Stellantis’ IBIS embeds the charger and inverter functions directly into the battery pack, an integration that results in reduced design complexity, interior space savings, and lifetime easier maintenance.
That improved efficiency carries on to the battery’s second life, too. IBIS facilitates the reuse of electric vehicle batteries in second-life battery energy storage systems (BESS) applications by reducing the need for extensive (and expensive) reconditioning.
up to 10% energy efficiency improvement (WLTC cycle) and 15% power gain (172 kW vs. 150 kW) with the same battery size
reduces vehicle weight by ~40 kg and frees up to 17 liters of volume, enabling better aerodynamics and design flexibility
early results show a 15% reduction in charging time (e.g., from 7 to 6 hours on a 7 kW AC charger), along with 10% energy savings
easier servicing and enhanced potential for second-life battery reuse in both automotive and stationary applications
Those benefits stem from the fact that EVs spend a lot of time and energy converting Alternating Current (AC) to Direct Current (DC) and back again with the – that’s true whether we’re talking about a L2 home charger or energy harvested from regenerative braking. Doing away with that process and the hardware that goes along with it could unlocks significant weight and efficiency benefits, with some estimates indicating that an IBIS car could weigh in at 40 kg less than a conventionally-equipped BEV, while still offering similar range and performance.
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