You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Once again we are nearly alone in our normally busy corporate offices in Manhattan Beach.
In early June we added additional safety features and began allowing a limited number of personnel back with staggered work schedule, while most of our talented team continued to successfully work from home.
As always, our top priority is the health and well-being of our employees and partners around the world.
The pandemic remains a deep concern driving our everyday decisions.
We continue to actively review inventory balances and production commitments across the globe, managing both to bring them in line with forecasted demand.
With the closure of most markets, it should be clear that the pandemic significantly impacted our business during the second quarter.
However, China led the path to recovery, first by stabilizing and then moving to growth by the end of the quarter.
As a result of the pandemic, our second quarter sales decreased 42% to $729.5 million, which consisted of a 37.8% decrease in our international businesses and a 47.3% decrease in our domestic businesses.
Despite the decreases, we believe the sales we achieved during the quarter are due to the strength of our product and the determination of our teams to drive sales where possible.
The primary drivers in the quarter were Asia, led by China with a 11.5% growth and our company-owned e-commerce business with sales growth of more than 400%.
With nearly all stores open in China during the second quarter, we gained insight into how to safely and efficiently reopen during the pandemic.
Additionally, we experienced pent-up demand for our product and saw our brand resonate with a wider and younger audience in our e-commerce channels in North America, Chile and Europe.
While our international wholesale business decreased 29.9%, China offered a model of recovery, stabilization and then growth in the quarter.
Every country's progress has been at a different pace.
But we began to see similar recoveries and stabilization trends in other markets.
These include Australia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, among others.
Each market has reopened at different times and under distinctive guidelines, but we are seeing positive signs within each of these regions.
At this time, more than 90% of the third-party SKECHERS stores around the world have reopened.
Feedback from many of our global partners has been that SKECHERS remains a go-to footwear brand in the markets as consumers seek casual, comfort and value during this challenging time.
Our domestic wholesale business decreased 57.2% reflecting the majority of retail store closures during much of the quarter.
Many of our partners have now reopened.
The demand remains high and we are shipping at an active rate.
We believe, based on early indicators from our partners and consumer sentiment, that SKECHERS will remain a key resource for these leading accounts.
With nearly all company-owned SKECHERS stores closed for most of the quarter, our direct-to-consumer business decreased 47.1%, which includes a 428.2% increase in our e-commerce business.
Comparable same-store sales in our direct-to-consumer business decreased 45.6%, including a decrease of 35.9% in the United States and 66.9% internationally.
We saw our direct to consumer comps improve month over month with total comp store sales down low double digits and domestic comps down single digits in June.
As of today, more than 90% of our global company-owned stores have reopened under heightened safety protocols.
Traffic and sales have been strongest within our big box and outlet locations, as well as our non-tourist stores.
Our company-owned stores that remain closed are primarily in South America.
As far as new store openings, we opened seven stores in the quarter; one in Germanyand three each in the United States and Japan, all locations that were under development prior to COVID-19.
Further 102 new third-party SKECHERS stores opened across 28 countries, bringing our total store count to 3,615 worldwide at quarter-end.
The key sales driver within our direct-to-consumer channel has been e-commerce which grew by triple digits in each of our platforms in North America, South America and Europe.
This week, we launched our new online shopping platform in the United States, which we believe will provide a better customer experience.
We plan to roll out the same platform to multiple countries later this year with even more countries planned for 2021 and beyond.
Additionally, South Korea has launched an e-commerce platform this month and several of our distributors are developing SKECHERS e-commerce websites.
Also after a successful pilot program during the second quarter, we will continue the rollout of our new retail POS system, providing a more efficient checkout experience in addition to BOPIS and BOPAC capabilities.
We believe consumers are gravitating toward comfortable and casual footwear.
At SKECHERS we design and deliver comfort, innovation, style and quality at a reasonable price in every one of our collections, from our athletic lifestyle footwear and a variety of fits under our SKECHERS Sport and SKECHERS Active lines, casual slip-on styles for men and women, work footwear for men and women, including styles designed for first responders, walking and running footwear and, of course, our kids footwear, which meets the needs of growing children.
Our natural product development cycles helped us navigate these unique times as we are more flexible, can easily pivot design and production and offer a flow of fresh product to meet the needs of the buy now, wear now consumer.
The progress we have made through the second quarter from a product and sales perspective couldn't have been achieved without our faster, flexible and focused business approach.
This has included actively reviewing inventory balances and production commitments across the globe, bringing both in line based on our forecast for demand and managing our expenses, while still supporting the businesses that are performing well, including a shift toward digital advertising to support our online sales.
Several integral factors are proving beneficial during this time and are helping ensure both the stability and success of the SKECHERS brand, our comfortable casual product at a reasonable price, the diversity of our distribution channels and broad-based customer demographics, the solid relationships with our factories and wholesale partners and our exceptionally strong balance sheet and ample liquidity.
Although the near term remains uncertain as some markets are still closed and the fluidity of the pandemic continues to be a substantial concern, we believe that the SKECHERS brand will continue to have a worldwide appeal.
And now to John.
First, I hope you're all staying safe and healthy.
Despite the challenges of the second quarter, demand for our product remains strong, as evidenced by the explosive growth of our online business, a return to growth in China and the steady month-over-month improvement we saw in the quarter across most of our businesses.
Today the majority of our stores are now fully operational and SKECHERS' value proposition continues to resonate with consumers, as our core casual athletic styles are decidedly on trend in a predominantly work-at-home environment.
We also continue to make investments, notably in our digital capabilities, which included an aggressive pivot toward digital advertising this quarter and the relaunch of our web site completed just this week, which will be followed by a new mobile app and a new loyalty program over the next few quarters.
We are also modernizing our in-store point-of-sale system to better integrate engagement with our customers both online and in store.
Overall, we remain extremely confident in our ability to manage through this crisis and optimistic about the long-term future of the SKECHERS brand.
Now turning to our second quarter results.
Similar to last quarter, I will not be detailing each and every impact of the pandemic.
But it should be clear that the closure of our stores and the stores of our wholesale customers for much of the quarter, negatively impacted our results nearly everywhere.
Sales in the quarter totaled $729.5 million, a decrease of $529.1 million or 42% from the prior year quarter.
On a constant currency basis, sales decreased $516.2 million or 41%.
Domestic wholesale sales declined 57.2% or $174.6 million as operations at many of our wholesale customers were closed, particularly in the first half of the second quarter.
International wholesale sales decreased 29.9% in the quarter.
Our wholly owned subsidiaries were down 43.7% and our distributor business decreased 58.1%.
However, our joint ventures were down only 6.4% as China sales grew 11.5% for the quarter led by e-commerce, which was especially strong over the 6-18 selling period.
Direct-to-consumer sales decreased 47.1%, the result of a 35.4% decrease domestically and a 66.6% decrease internationally, reflecting the impact of temporary store closures globally, partially offset by a 428.2% increase in our e-commerce business.
Gross profit was $368.6 million, down $241.2 million compared to the prior year on lower sales volumes while gross margin increased by approximately 210 basis points to 50.5%.
The higher gross margins were attributable to a favorable mix of online and international sales.
Total operating expenses decreased by $73 million or 14.5% to $432.1 million in the quarter, reflecting the swift actions we took during the quarter to reduce all non-essential discretionary spending.
Selling expenses decreased by $53.3 million or 46.9% to $60.2 million, primarily due to lower advertising expenses globally, partially offset by an increase in digital advertising spend.
General and administrative expenses decreased by $19.7 million or 5% to $371.9 million reflecting reductions in discretionary spending and compensation related costs and despite the inclusion of an incremental $10.2 million in bad debt expense due to the expected impact of the pandemic on wholesale customers across the globe.
Loss from operations was $61 million versus the prior year earnings from operations of $111.1 million.
Net loss was $68.1 million or $0.44 per diluted share on 154.1 million diluted shares outstanding compared to net income of $75.2 million or $0.49 per diluted share on 153.9 million diluted shares outstanding in the prior year.
Our effective income tax rate for the quarter decreased to 7.2% from 18.4% in the prior year and resulted in a net tax benefit of $4.3 million.
And now turning to our balance sheet.
At June 30th, 2020, we had over $1.56 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments, which was an increase of $524.5 million or 50.9% from December 31st, 2019 reflecting the drawdown of our senior unsecured credit facility last quarter.
Importantly, this represents an increase in net cash balances over last quarter of $189.3 million, reflecting our prudent inventory, working capital and operating expense management and including $75.9 million of capital expenditures.
Trade accounts receivable at quarter-end were $478 million, a decrease of 25.9% or $167.3 million from December 31st, 2019 and a decrease of 25.5% or $163.4 million from June 30th, 2019.
The decrease in accounts receivable was primarily due to successful collection activities during the quarter, coupled with lower global wholesale sales.
Total inventory was $1.03 billion, a decrease of 3.9% or $42.1 million from December 31st, 2019, but an increase of 20.1% or $172.1 million from June 30th, 2019.
The increase in year-over-year inventory levels is attributable to Asia where sales have largely recovered from the most serious effects of the pandemic.
We continue to aggressively manage product supply in light of anticipated demand, aiming to prudently balance our inventory to position us constructively for the back half of the year and 2021.
Total debt, including both current and long-term portions, was $763.3 million compared to $121.2 million at December 31st, 2019.
The increase primarily reflects the drawdown of our senior unsecured credit facility in the first quarter.
Capital expenditures for the second quarter were $75.9 million, of which $20.5 million related to our new China corporate office space, $13.8 million related to several new store openings worldwide, $12.4 million was associated with our new distribution center in China and $10.9 million related to the expansion of our domestic distribution center.
As we discussed on our last call, we prioritized our capital expenditures this quarter to focus only on business critical and highly strategic projects, like the launch of our new digital platform and completion of our new distribution center in China.
As mentioned previously, our new web site launched this week and several supporting digital initiatives will follow.
In China, our distribution center progress has been slowed by the impacts of the pandemic which has particularly hampered the installation and testing of our automation.
We now expect the distribution center to begin limited operations in the third quarter and to become fully operational over the first half of 2021.
As our businesses continue to recover, we expect to restart investments that have been paused like the rollout of a new global point-of-sale system and significant additional capacity at our US distribution center.
However, given the ongoing dislocation in the retail environment, we expect to continue tightly regulating our new store opening plans.
We now expect total capital expenditures over the remainder of the year to be between $100 million and $150 million.
We have also commenced the expansion of our US distribution center, which is owned and financed through a joint venture that we consolidate for accounting purposes.
We expect incremental capital expenditures related to that expansion to total between $90 million and $110 million this quarter -- this year, sorry, of which approximately $10 million has already been recorded.
As David said, while the near term remains uncertain, we are confident that we have taken the necessary actions to ensure that SKECHERS will successfully navigate this crisis.
We will not be providing revenue or earnings guidance at this time as the current environment remains too dynamic from which to plan results with a reasonable degree of certainty.
However, given the strength of our brands, our compelling value proposition and our healthy balance sheet, we believe SKECHERS is well positioned to continue growing once the situation normalizes.
We are more than halfway through what has proven to be an unprecedented year.
We have successfully embraced the new way of conducting business both at our corporate offices with safer at-home work guidelines and in our retail stores with extensive safety measures put in place for our employees and customers.
We experienced exceptionally strong demand for our brand in Europe, North America and South America with our e-commerce platforms growing more than 400%.
Similarly, we saw demand in Asia primarily within [Phonetic] China with a 11.5% growth, including e-commerce growth of 43%.
Many of our global partners have indicated that SKECHERS remains a go-to brand in their stores and we ramped up shipments to these businesses.
Nearly all the SKECHERS retail stores around the world are now open following safety protocols.
In our company-owned stores we are seeing improved month-over-month comp store sales.
As a few countries remain closed, others are reopening and consumer shopping habits are changing.
We believe the pandemic will not only continue to be a concern, but it's also changing the retail and competitive landscape.
We believe that SKECHERS is well positioned to accelerate out of the Global Health Conference when it stabilizes and that we will remain a global footwear leader.
We are optimistic with the reception of our vast product offering and a reasonable price and the loyalty of our consumers, the positive sentiment toward the safety measures we have taken in our SKECHERS retail stores and the flexibility and determination of our teams around the world.

user
q2 loss per share $0.44.
q2 sales $729.5 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $659.7 million.
qtrly company-owned e-commerce sales grew 428.2 percent.
company is not providing further financial guidance at this time.
impact of covid-19 to skechers' business was significant in q2.
china sales grew 11.5 percent in q2.
optimistic about early-stage recovery we are seeing in much of our business, including a return to growth in china.
more than 90 percent of our skechers stores re-opened.

assistant