– This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on May 12, Friday.
Welcome to CNBC Business Daily, I'm Qian Chen.
Shares of the stock fell more than 17 percent Thursday following the disappointing report, which showed further deterioration over recent quarters.
Macy's first-quarter earnings miss shows just how far the retailer has to go before it can turn things around.
The department store operator said same-store sales - a metric closely watched for retail stocks by Wall Street - fell 4.6 percent for the quarter, including sales in departments licensed to third parties. The loss was deeper than analysts' estimates of a 2.7 percent decline, according to FactSet.
Macy's expects 2017 comparable sales - on an owned plus licensed basis - to fall 2 to 3 percent. Total sales are still expected to be down 3.2 to 4.3 percent.
During Thursday's trading session, Macy's is not the only loser among retailers.
Kohl, Nordstrom as well JCPenney all saw company shares plunging by more than 7 percent.
These companies are at a time when department stores are struggling to keep pace with off-price brands and e-commerce players such as Amazon.
How to survive, is the biggest challenge now.
[BRIDGET WEISHAAR, Morningstar Senior Equity Analyst, Consumer Discretionary] "The one thing that Amazon doesn't do well is curations. So if you go to Amazon, and you do a search for white T-shirt, and you are gonna end up with thousands of results. That can be pretty frustrating for the shopper. If you have somebody like Nordstrom, they target the specific nitch market, and they carry everything at a certain price point that the nitch customers are gonna want, and the customers appreciate the ease of shopping. So I think there's a place for the department store model, but I think its gonna look very different from it was historically, and also much much smaller."
Now, investors are waiting for the economic data of April retail sales, which would tell us more whether the big decline among retailers in the Q1 is due to continuously changing consumer behaviors, or is due to consumer's willingness to spend less.
CNBC's Qian Chen, reporting from Singapore.