Victoria’s Secret Closing 250 Stores After Company Suffers a $275.2 Million Quarterly Loss

Victoria’s Secret will permanently close around 250 stores in the U.S. and Canada in 2020, parent company L Brands announced Wednesday.

The company made the announcement Wednesday in their first-quarter fiscal report.

The parent company L Brands has said it plans to spin-off Bath & Body Works and operate Victoria’s Secret as a standalone business. L Brands was founded in 1963 by Leslie H. Wexner in Columbus, Ohio. Wexner was the only known client of disgraced money manager Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail cell in 2019.

The company has been hard hit by the economic turmoil of the coronavirus. Nearly all of its stores in the U.S. closed in March and those that will reopen are not expected to open until July.

L Brands said its overall sales for the three months ended May 2 fell 37 percent compared with a year ago. Gross profit fell 59 percent. The company lost $275.2 million in the quarter, compared with net income of $40.3 a year ago. Profits per share were down 807 percent for a loss of 99 cents per share.