Charlie. Thank you. From the Bloomberg Newsroom by Mark Crumpton. This news update is brought to you by the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the most awarded suv ever. The Grand Cherokee continues to raise the bar with its luxurious interior and legendary four by four capability. Drive one at your local jeep dealer. Today, the Associated Press reports Egypt says it spotted the wreckage of the egypt airplane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all sixty six people on board.
The country's investigating Committee said in a statement late today that a vessel contracted by the Egyptian government to join the search efforts for the data recorders and the wreckage of Flight A three Quote had identified several main locations of the wreckage. Accordingly, the first images of the wreckage
were provided to the investigation committee end quote. Campaigning in Atlanta today, presidential candidate Donald Trump said he's running as a Republican but doesn't really care if he gets an endorsement from top GOP leaders. You know, the republic and honestly, folks, our leaders, our leaders have to get tougher. This is too tough to do it alone. But you know what, I think I'm gonna be forced to. I think I'm
going to be forced to. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton told the Borders in Hampton, Virginia, Donald Trump has no idea how to stop terrorism. He has been fixated on the phrase and I quote radical Islam as if those are magic words that, once uttered, we'll stop terrorists from coming after us. Mrs Clinton said, quote. Not one of Donald Trump's reckless
ideas would have saved a single life in Orlando. Global News twenty four hours a day, powered by our journalists in more than one hundred fifty news bureaus around the world. From the Bloomberg News Room by Mark Crumpton, Charlie and another after the Bell Deal to tell you about Envision buying am Serge, with the deal enterprise value about fifteen billion dollars. I'm Charlie Poddett. That's a Bloomberg business flash.
Charlie Pillett, thank you so very much. Mark in focus now, CEO of Signat Jewelers, parent company to the Cay Jewelers and Sales brands, among others, has been under fire recently for allegations of the company's substituted premium diamonds with cheaper, man made substitutes. He sat down with me earlier today to discuss how he's addressing investor concerns and what this investigation means to the company. First of all, it means everything to us, because we are in the business of trust.
I've been Signal Jewelers is business for a hundred years, and I personally have been working for Signal for over thirty years. Is the only place I've worked. And over the years, year after year after year, we consistently try to understand our customers. We serve our customers, and for years, and I'm talking for over thirty years, the most important characteristic when our customers looking for a diamond or jewelry,
it's not assortment, it's not the price, it's trust. So everything we do as a jewelry people, we always are trying to make certain that we have the trust of our customers critical. So once we heard about these these alleged um diamonds being changed or missing, we got about
it immediately. Of course, the first thing we did we got in touch with the customers and we tried to understand the situation, and we wanted to make it right for them first and foremost parallel to that, we immediately got involved to understand the process, to make sure that the process that we have in place is making sure that there were no problems. So as a whole we react to everyone as as quickly as we possibly can.
One thing you need to understand is that as signat Jeweler's UM we did last year alone over four million. It's called the products that went through our repair and service of over four million. And when we looked and looked and studied our customer complaints that relates to our repeer and service centers, less than two tenths of a percent of our customers complained about something to do with a repair, missing or or quality issues. I'm talking all
in less than two tenths percent. And by the way, two tenths of percent is too much for us and for me, so that we are looking at all our process and making sure we get it right for our customers. Are you concerned that you have You've done interviews like this, You've said you've looked into it, and only a tiny fractional percentage first of all our complaints from your customers, and even then you're you're not Are you saying that you have found no one. There's no one who can
prove that you have found whose diamond was swapped. As of yet, we are investigating any customer in every customer. As of yet, we haven't verified it, but we're taking every every individual customers seriously and if we find something, once we get the diamond and we'll have it checked and we make sure if it's not, then we will get involved and find a figure out. What where is the problem. Are you concerned that your share price has
fallen so sharply? You recently purchased about what two dollars worth of your stock a sign. I'm sure you're trying to show the public you believe in the company, but investors seem to doubt what you have said and potentially done. You have to look at our company over years. We are we are a company over the last three years have had eight to miss uncompounded annual growth rate. If you look back another five years or ten years, we
have been outpacing the growth of the jeweler industry. We've been out for it's in the growth of the of the retailer sheet and from a profitable perspective, are we concerned? Of course, that's why I'm here today trying to set the record straight that we had signa Jewelers are making sure that we're doing the right things for our customers. Keeping their trust is critical. What about concerns about the credit facility that you use to help customers buy jewelry
from you, especially diamond such an important purchase. Issues raised by people like Jim Grant, the Grand Interistrate Observer that some of these credits may not be as solid as they once were, that maybe the way you account for them uh makes those credits look better than they really are, and that's something that could also be a concern to investors.
We have been lending money. We've had an internal credit business for well over thirty years and the specifically the internal credit is servicing our Case stores and our Jared stores. Our sales team have we used a d S for for our business there. But we've been doing this for over thirty years. We've been through three recessions during that time frames, so we've we've been using the same methodology,
the same agent methodology for over thirty years. And by the way, um when we start over thirty years ago, that methodology was very commonly used in retail and we have been using it for over thirty years, and we feel very confident going through the recessions that we have a good handle on our credit business, very good handle. We have the experience there. I wanted the switch gears and step back and look at signat Jewelers. What is your business tell you about the health of the US economy?
Is that good and getting better? Are you concerned they might be slowing down a bit? Again, if you just look at the at our numbers we reported our fourth quarter, we reported that we're up on a comp store basis four point five which, by the way, is one of the tops of retails that reported retailers reported. Then you look at our first quarter results, we're up two point
four percent, again one of the top performing retailers. And what we told um the market during our second our first quarter call is that we're projecting that the second quarter that are comes will be up one to two and so there's there has been a deceleration. Um that being said, we're doing all we can. We've got a lot of great new innovative products that we're developing. We've got a lot of exciting new um TV ads are working on, and a lot of new exciting training programs,
but there has been a deceleration. You have business in the UK. There's a big vote next week Brexit. Well, the UK vote to leave the EU European Union. How would that affect you? Look, we've we've known about the brexit um for over a year. We've planned for it one way or the other. One thing we've we know is that whether the people vote to stay in Britain or not, people still fall in love. People still have birthdays,
people still getting married, people still buying birthday presents. So we are ready to adjust appropriately, but our product category, we believe no matter what happens, people are still falling in love and giving gifts to people. Mark White, the chief executive of Signet Jewelers. They operate K Jewelers as well as Zales and Jared Jewels store chains. The shares of signat jew there's down eighty eight cents today, closing at eighty two dollars and ninety nine center down more
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