Citizens hosts small business award contest
Selected businesses will receive $10,000
Citizens Financial Group Inc. has announced the launch of its fourth annual Small Business Community Champion Award contest. The program is aimed at recognizing the positive contributions small businesses make to their communities.
Now in its fourth year, the contest will award $10,000 each to 30 small businesses across Citizens’ 11-state footprint, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. At least 10 minority-owned and 10 women-owned businesses will be awarded prizes “to help further strengthen their communities and their businesses,” according to a press release.
A total of $300,000 will be awarded this year — the largest award pool for the Citizens Small Business Community Champion Award to date. Nominations are being accepted until March 1, 2021 at 5 p.m.
“Every small business follows its own unique journey. Along the way, it makes extraordinary contributions to the lives of their customers and local communities,” reads an online description of why Citizens launched the Community Champion Award.
The contest is open to for-profit small businesses that have been in operation for at least two years, with up to $3 million in revenue and located in Citizen’s geographic footprint.
To enter, eligible businesses will answer three questions, and must also upload at least one photo. The questions are:
• How would you use the Citizens Small Business Community Champion Award to strengthen and sustain your business?
• How would you use the Citizens
Small Business Community Champion Award to support your community’s growth?
• How is your business adapting to meet the evolving needs and behaviors of your customers and/or community?
Winners will be selected based on how their businesses have adapted to “meet the evolving needs and behaviors of their customers and community and the perceived differences of their plans to utilize the prize in order to strengthen and sustain their business and community,” the website reads.
According to the rules, 25 finalists will be identified in each business category, based on the following criteria: the perceived effectiveness of the entrant’s plan to use the prize to strengthen and sustain their business (35%); the perceived effectiveness of the entrant’s plan to use the prize to help their community (35%); and the perceived innovation/creativity of entrant’s action/plan to respond to the changing needs of their customers/community (30%).
To view the official rules, additional instructions and requirements and to enter the contest visit https://www.citizensbank. com/businesschampion. Winners will be notified in April.
The housing market was among the very few bright spots for the U.S. economy in the year of the lockdown and Home Depot became its supplier, racking up an unprecedented $132 billion in sales for 2020.
Sales grew stronger in the final quarter of the year, surging 25% to $32.26 billion. That is up from $25.78 billion in the same period last year and exceeded even the lofty projections for $30.66 billion on Wall Street, according to a survey of analysts by Zacks Investment Research.
Home improvement stores became a beehive during the pandemic with millions working from home and attending school remotely. Many families concluded bigger homes, or at least different homes, were the answer in 2020, driving prices sky high.
On Tuesday, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index recorded a 10.1% spike in December, compared with the same month last year. That topped the 9.2% jump the previous month, and all other months going back almost seven years.
While Home Depot was not alone in meeting the demand for hammers, paint or appliances that go along with a housing boom, the sheer volume of goods it sold this year were staggering.
Attempting to put that volume into context, Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, calculated that in 2020 the equivalent of every person in the United States spent $402 at Home Depot.
“It is easy to look at Home Depot’s numbers and chalk up its success to the pandemic,” Saunders said Tuesday. “However, sustaining three quarters of growth above 20% is extremely difficult in terms of the pressure it puts on the whole operation from supply chains to stores.”
Global sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, climbed 24.5%, and by 25% if only U.S. stores are counted.
Home Depot Inc. earned $2.86 billion, or $2.65 per diluted share, for the three months ended Jan. 31 compared with $2.48 billion, or $2.28 per diluted share, a year earlier.
Earnings, adjusted for costs related to mergers and acquisitions, were $2.74 per share. That handily beat the $2.63 per share Wall Street was calling for.
The Atlanta company on Tuesday said that it was not providing annual guidance for the year, citing the uncertainty of the pandemic. Given the huge numbers Home Depot put up in 2020, that dispirited investors, and shares fell more than 3% at the opening bell.
However, in a show of confidence, the nation’s biggest home improvement chain boosted its quarterly dividend 10%, to $1.65 per share.