High-End Retail Braces For Nordstrom Earnings (JWN)

Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE: JWN) is set to report earnings after the close today.  First Call has the following estimates:

Time                        EPS         $REV
Q4-2008 (Jan.)   $0.88    $2.53 Billion
Q1-2009 (Apr.)    $0.59    $1.99 Billion
FY-2009 (Jan.)    $2.98    $9.31 Billion

Just last week, Nordstrom hiked its dividend to $0.16 from $0.135.  It new dividend yield as of today’s price is about 1.7%.  The company saw a sharp drop in January same store sales with a 6.6% drop.  The total sales were down a total of 20.3%, and while these were affected by one less week it was still a highly noticed drop.  Sales would have supposedly been down 1.2% without the minus one week issues.

While this will be watched closely, we already had been given the preliminary quarterly revenues at $2.51 Billion on a total Q4 same store sales of -0.7%.  Investors will therefore most likely be watching for any comments on guidance.

Nordstrom stock is very close to its 50-day moving average of $35.29, which is only about 3% under today’s share prices.  We have already seen more than one-third of a share price haircut as the 52-week trading range is $28.00 to $59.50.

Jon C. Ogg
February 25, 2008