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Toys 'R' Us shares soar
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January 4, 2001: 2:51 p.m. ET
Stock jumps 24% after same-store holiday sales surprise
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Toys "R" Us Inc. shares soared more than 24 percent Thursday after the company bucked the trend of other retailers that struggled during the holiday period.
Toys "R" Us shares jumped $4.50, or 24.3 percent, to $23 after the company said its same-store holiday sales, or sales of stores open at least a year, rose 3.5 percent from a year earlier.
 The Paramus, N.J.-based company said sales at its Toyrus.com Web site more than tripled, to $124 million for the nine weeks ended Dec. 30 from $39 million for the same period a year ago.
"Our strong performance in the 2000 holiday selling season is indicative of a number of encouraging trends underway at Toys "R" Us," President and CEO John Eyler said.
"Frankly, the results surprised me. I was hoping for a low, low single-digit rise," Tucker Anthony Capital Markets analyst Margaret Whitfield said.
Whitfield said the results were particularly impressive because they were achieved despite a drop in same-store video game sales.
"So they actually did better than 3.5 percent in the toy industry itself," Whitfield said. "Clearly they did better than the rest of the industry," she added.
Other major retailers struggled during the holiday season, due to a combination of reluctant consumers, bad weather and a lack of hot-selling items.
"It's really encouraging that in a pretty difficult retail environment and a challenging toy environment, they were able to pull this off," Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co. analyst Melissa Williams said. "This bodes well for the company for 2001 and beyond."
The results gave some analysts hope that Toys "R" Us finally is regaining market share on Wal-Mart after years of bashing from the world's top retailer.
"For the first time in many years (Toys "R" Us) appears to be gaining share back from Wal-Mart," Merrill Lynch analyst Peter Caruso said in a research note.
-- from staff and wire reports 
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Toysrus.com/Amazon.com
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