Abercrombie Whiffs on Earnings but Sees a Turnaround in Progress

Part of the net loss for this quarter can be attributed to the adverse impact of foreign currency exchange rates of roughly $0.13. At the same time, net sales for the first quarter decreased 14%, driven by a comparable sales decline of 8% and an adverse effect from changes in foreign currency exchange rates of 6%.

The company gave guidance for 2015 but it was more of the broad strokes. For the year, Abercrombie & Fitch expects continued macro headwinds, sequential comparable sales improvement and for gross margin to be flat or slightly up. There are consensus estimates of $0.91 in earnings per share on $3.51 billion in revenue.

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Arthur Martinez, executive chairman of Abercrombie & Fitch, commented on earnings:

During the quarter, the Company continued to take major strides to revitalize its brands, enhance performance, and position itself for a return to profitable growth.

This includes significant changes across our business, including augmenting our leadership team, enhancing organizational structure and efficiency, addressing core merchandise and design processes, and optimizing our store fleet by adding stores in high potential markets while closing under-performing stores. We are also moving forward on other core elements of our strategy, including investing in omnichannel capabilities. Importantly, we have focused the entire organization on putting the customer at the center of everything we do, particularly with regard to store experience and our merchandise assortment.

In terms of the company’s omnichannel capabilities, net sales from direct-to-consumer and omnichannel grew to about 23% of the total company net sales in the first quarter, compared to roughly 21% of total company net sales last year.

The company ended this quarter with $383.2 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared to $357.1 million in the same period from last year.

The CEO capped off the report acknowledging the shortcomings this quarter but keeping the company looking to the future:

However, we did see sequential improvements in a number of areas during the quarter, most notably within Hollister, and our comparable sales trend has continued to improve in May. While our turnaround won`t be accomplished overnight, we believe the changes we are making will reinvigorate our iconic brands and lead to meaningful and lasting improvement.

Shares of Abercrombie & Fitch were up 7.9% at $21.20 Thursday morning. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $21.96 and a 52-week trading range of $19.34 to $45.50.

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