There are updates on tjmaxx and marshalls. TJX in the beginning supposed the intrusion began in May 2006 but the company said its ongoing investigation discovered the breach started nearly a year earlier, in July 2005.
Also, TJX declared that credit and debit card data had been accessed concerning transactions at U.S. and Puerto Rican stores from as far as January 2003 through June 2004, and credit card-only transactions at Canadian shops during the same period.
JX also found more cases in which the hacker accessed drivers' license numbers simultaneously with names and addresses. TJX said it would notify affected customers.
The company said it's too soon to approximate its losses from the breach, which prompted banks nationwide to reissue debit and credit cards to guard against further fraud. TJX also faces lawsuits from customers and financial institutions, and dozens of states have expressed interest in joining a civil investigation into TJX's security led by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.
TJX has not disclosed the number of customers affected, and the company declined to take questions from analysts on the data breach during its earnings conference call.
T.J. Maxx and Marshalls reported 5 percent sales growth during its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended just 10 days after the breach was disclosed Jan. 17.
Company executives said they saw no evidence of any exodus of customers from TJX's more than 2,400 stores after the data theft. Industry analysts agreed.
"To the degree that that may possibly have occurred, it certainly hasn't shown up in the numbers," said Donald Trott of Jefferies &Co.
TJX's forecasts of first-quarter and full-year earnings, however, fell just shy of Wall Street's expectations. Investors sent the Framingham-based company's shares down 44 cents, or 1.54 percent, to close at $28.18 on the New York Stock Exchange.
TJX also reported a 29 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings compared with its strong performance in the same quarter a year earlier.
The latest quarter's profit was $205.5 million, or 44 cents per share, compared with $288.7 million, or 60 cents per share, a year ago, when net income rose 75 percent.
TJX's latest quarterly profit was reduced 8 cents per share from costs to close 34 A.J. Wright stores, and a penny a share from costs tied to the data breach.
The data theft costs equaled about $5 million for the quarter, including expenses to investigate and contain an intrusion the company says it learned about in mid-December. TJX waited a month to disclose the breach, saying the delay allowed it to work with security experts to contain the problem.
Excluding the breach-related costs that TJX says it can't estimate, the company expects first-quarter earnings from continuing operations of 36 cents to 38 cents per share - just shy of the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, who expect 40 cents per share.
For the fiscal year ending in January 2008, TJX expects earnings of $1.80 and $1.85 per share, compared with analysts' per-share estimate of $1.86.
TJX is the parent company of stores including T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A.J. Wright in the U.S., Winners and HomeSense in Canada and T.K. Maxx in Britain.
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