Barbara Rentler
Analyst · the SEC.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Barbara Rentler, Chief Executive Officer
Good afternoon. Joining me on our call today are Michael Balmuth, Executive Chairman; Michael O'Sullivan, President and Chief Operating Officer; Gary Cribb, Executive Vice President, Stores and Loss Prevention; John Call, Executive Vice President, Finance and Legal; Michael Hartshorn, Group Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Connie Wong, Senior Director of Investor Relations.
We'll begin our call today with a review of our first quarter 2015 performance followed by our outlook for the second quarter and fiscal year. Afterwards, we'll be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
As noted in today's press release, we are pleased with our better-than-expected first quarter sales and earnings. Our results continue to benefit from value-focused customers responding favorably to our fresh and exciting assortments of name brand bargains.
Earnings per share for the first quarter were $1.37, up from $1.15 in the prior year. Net earnings for the quarter grew to $282 million compared to $244 million for the same period last year. These earnings results include a benefit of about $0.04 per share mainly from the favorable timing of packaway-related costs that are expected to reverse in subsequent quarters. Adjusting for this expense timing, first quarter 2015 earnings per share rose 16% over the prior year period. Sales rose 10% for the quarter to $2,938,000,000 with comparable store sales up 5% over the prior year.
Like Ross, dd's DISCOUNTS also posted better-than-expected gains in sales and profits for the quarter as customers continued to respond positively to their value offering.
The strength in merchandise and geographic sales trends for Ross during the first quarter were relatively broad based. Juniors continues to be the best-performing category during the quarter, while the Midwest was the strongest region.
Our first quarter operating margin grew to 15.7%, up from 14.6% last year. As we ended the first quarter, total consolidated inventories were up 20% over the prior year, while packaway levels were about 45% of total inventory. Average in-store inventories at the end of the first quarter were down slightly versus last year. The growth in total inventory reflects our ability to take advantage of increased closeout availability, a portion of which is from the ongoing West Coast port disruption. In addition, we increased inbound in-transit inventory to mitigate longer lead times from this situation.
Let's turn now to our expansion program. Store growth remains on track with 32 new Ross and 5 dd's DISCOUNTS opening in the first quarter. For fiscal 2015, we continue to plan for about 70 new Ross and 20 dd's DISCOUNTS locations. As usual, these numbers do not reflect our plans to close or relocate about 10 older stores.
Now Michael Hartshorn will provide further color on our first quarter results and details on our second quarter guidance.