Embattled teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE: ANF) announced Tuesday it is separating the roles of chairman and CEO, and it has named three new directors. Mike Jeffries, who has been chairman and chief executive since 1996, will remain CEO. Arthur Martinez, who had been chairman and CEO of Sears, Roebuck & Co. from 1995 to 2000, was named non-executive chairman of the board.
He is joined on the board by Terry Burman, currently chairman of Zale, and Charles Perrin, who has been chairman and CEO of Avon Products and, before that, Duracell, now part of Procter & Gamble. Craig Stapleton, who has been the lead director, will remain a director.
Abercrombie also announced it was terminating its shareholder rights plan, often called a poison pill. The plan had been devised to fend off unwanted suitors. The real question to ask is if this means that Abercrombie & Fitch is now open to being acquired. It could even signal that it is now more open to activist investors who may push for a breakup of the company.
Abercrombie & Fitch has struggled in the past few years to connect with its core audience — teens and young adults. The stock is off a third from its 52-week peak of $55.23 reached last May. In November, the company said it expected earnings to come in at $1.40 to $1.50 a share, well below the Wall Street consensus of $1.95 a share. It reported a loss of $0.20 a share in its fiscal third quarter as sales fell 12% to $1 billion.
The current consensus estimate is for fourth-quarter earnings of $1.03, down from $2.01 a year ago, with revenue down 8.7% to $1.34 billion. The full-year revenue estimate is $4.16 billion, down 7.7% from its 2012-2013 fiscal year. The company is expected to report results on Feb. 26.
Teen retailers such as A&F have been discounting prices substantially in the past year or so. One reason is high unemployment rates among the young, but also because teens have been spending more on high-cost products such as mobile phones, gaming consoles and tablets.
Investors seemed to like the move because it makes less of a one-man show built around Jeffries. Shares were up 6.4% to $36.84 in late morning trading Tuesday. Jeffries has been under fire as well. He received a new contract starting Feb. 1 that pays him $1.5 million a year and boosts his annual bonus to as high as $3.6 million. He also has stirred up controversy by calling employees “models,” not stocking apparel for large customers and for the infamous quarterly magazine that some said was soft porn. The magazine was discontinued in 2003.
Before Jeffries’ new contract was announced, Engaged Capital — which owns 400,000 shares of the retailer — sent a letter to the company demanding that Jeffries be replaced. Engaged said at the time that it believed the retailer’s “perennial underperformance is a result of a failure of leadership.”
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