This week in retail: Amazon earnings, NYC retail real estate conference, and Party City auction

We hope everyone had a good Earth Day weekend. Let’s close out the final week of April with a shortlist of happenings in the retail world.

In earnings: On Thursday, Amazon will host an earnings call just a couple weeks after CEO Andy Jassy penned his second annual shareholder letter highlighting the company's cost-cutting measures, including cutting 27,000 jobs.

• In the letter released April 13, Jassy noted that Amazon has faced one of the more challenging periods in the company’s history.

“While there were an unusual number of simultaneous challenges this past year, the reality is that if you operate in large, dynamic, global market segments with many capable and well-funded competitors (the conditions in which Amazon operates all of its businesses), conditions rarely stay stagnant for long,” Jassy wrote.

Tomorrow, McDonald’s will release its Q1 earnings before the market opens, and analysts expect the fast-food chain to build on its success. In Q4, McDonald’s saw increased traffic in the US, as consumers flocked away from full-service restaurants.

• The company also found success through its McRib “farewell tour” promotion.
• Internationally, McDonald’s same-store sales increased 12.6% YoY, with strong performances in Europe.

McDonald’s will also start selling cups of its Big Mac special sauce, or you can get it free with your McNuggets.

Other earnings this week include Coca-Cola (Monday), PepsiCo and Chipotle (Tuesday), eBay (Wednesday), and The Hershey Company and Pinterest (Friday).

In meetups: On April 25, Bisnow will host its National Retail Conference in New York City. On tap: what the retail real estate landscape looks like, how developers see the retail sector nationally and in NYC, and top opportunities for retailers.

• Notable speakers include Lori Pellegrino, lead real estate manager at Chipotle; Andrew McCaughan, chief development officer at Shake Shack; and Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder and CEO of Van Leeuwen Ice Cream.

In auctions: Nine Party City stores will go up for auction on Friday after the company filed for bankruptcy in January. The deadline to place a bid is today.

When it filed for bankruptcy, Party City operated 770 company-owned locations and 53 franchise stores. In January, the company asked to be released from 28 leases for stores it had already closed.