Circuit City's Sales Short-Circuit

'Tis the season to be jolly, right? Well, if you're a retailer, 'tis the season to be growing same-store sales is more apropos. Unfortunately, Circuit City (NYSE: CC  ) is on Santa's bad-comps list right now.

The retailer reported a decline in its third-quarter sales for comparable locations. Sure, total sales may have increased 3.8%, coming in at $2.5 billion, but the important metric here is comparable store merchandise sales, which the company says decreased by 4.3%. The figure for the nine-month period is a little better, showing an increase for comparable store sales by 1.2%, but that's still rather weak.

When it comes to the consumer retail game, comps are what it's all about. Investors need to see a healthy trend with this metric. Certain contextual situations might mitigate a stockholder's view of a weak month, such as some sort of weather anomaly, but excuses are never tolerated for long. Fool colleague Nathan Slaughter found the company to be improving in his analysis of the previous earnings report (in which comps were up 2.9%), and another compatriot of mine, Alyce Lomax, put Circuit City's somewhat tepid 2Q same-store sales results (which had missed expectations) into a proper perspective. Nevertheless, the statistics that I am covering today lead me to believe that the company needs to take a hard look at the way it markets itself. Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation Best Buy (NYSE: BBY  ) must be offering up some difficult competition, as are traditional discounters like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT  ) and Target (NYSE: TGT  ) .

With the holiday season upon us, one would have expected this past quarter to have been more interesting; instead, it is disappointing. For those who believe that the company's initiatives going forward (touched upon in Slaughter's article) will eventually pan out, this recent downslide can only be viewed as a buying opportunity. Speaking for myself, I wouldn't buy the stock until I saw a clear indication that the company was solidly on track; in other words, paraphrasing Jerry Maguire: Show me the sales!

For more articles on retail, see:

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Fool contributor Steven Mallas owns none of the companies mentioned.