Whole Foods Q3 Beats Street on the Bottom Line, Sales In Line

Whole Foods posted a fourth quarter loss of $0.35 a share on revenue of $3.26 billion. Wall Street analysts were looking for profits of $0.32 on sales of $3.26 billion. Last year, the supermarket earned $0.32 per share on $2.98 billion in sales. As for details, Whole Foods had a record 13 new store openings in the quarter, expanding into seven new markets. Comparable store sales growth was 3.1% on top of 5.9% in the prior year. The grocery chain returned $44 million in quarterly dividends to shareholders and repurchased $100 million of common stock. Whole Foods ended the quarter with total cash and cash equivalents of approximately $1 billion. TheStreet's Gregg Greenberg has details from New York.