News in brief

Car-Mart CEO sells

stock, nets $211,646

America's Car-Mart Inc.'s chief executive, Hank Henderson, made more than $200,000 in a stock transaction earlier this month, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Henderson exercised his option to purchase 8,392 shares of Car-Mart stock at $11.90 each and sold an equal number of shares at a weighted average price of $37.12, according to documents. After the moves were complete, Henderson had made $211,646 and still retains 87,690 shares of the company.

In late May, Bentonville-based America's Car-Mart reported fourth-quarter profits for fiscal 2017 of $5.2 million, or 66 cents per share. A consensus estimate of four analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance had called for a profit of 65 cents per share.

The company reported revenue of $152.9 million for the fourth quarter compared with $154.7 million for the same period a year ago. The four analysts had predicted average revenue of $154.9 million for the quarter.

-- John Magsam

3 Sears stores to be 'appliance experts'

Three Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores in Hope, Malvern and Paragould will have grand reopenings June 16-17 as part of the retailer's efforts to refresh those stores nationwide.

Sears created the Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores as a separate public company in 2012. In 2015, the company began updating those stores and rebranding them as "America's Appliance Experts." Sears said it has more than 635 such stores nationwide.

Appliances manufactured by Sears' mainstays, including GE, Whirlpool, Maytag, Kenmore, KitchenAid and Samsung, will take up more than half of the sales-floor space in the remodeled stores, the company said in a news release Tuesday.

Sears has been closing its larger stores and selling off segments, such as its Craftsman tools line, in a fight to survive after six straight years of poor sales and falling profits.

-- Stephen Steed

13 stocks dip, 5 rise; index falls to 324.40

The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, dropped 2.96 to 324.40 Tuesday.

"The major averages declined for a consecutive session Tuesday amid continuing uncertainty on the geopolitical front," said Bob Williams, senior vice president and managing director of Simmons First Investment Group Inc. in Little Rock.

Thirteen stocks declined and five advanced.

Total volume for the index was 24.4 million shares.

The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.

Business on 06/07/2017

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