How Men’s Wearhouse Got Crushed by Earnings

When Men’s Wearhouse Inc. (NYSE: MW) reported its fiscal third-quarter financial results after the markets closed on Wednesday, it had $0.50 in earnings per share (EPS) on $865.45 million in revenue. That compared to consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters of $0.50 in EPS on $876.81 million in revenue. The same period from the previous year had $0.83 in EPS on $890.64 million in revenue.

As the company reported in its preliminary results earlier in November, third-quarter comparable sales increased 5.3% at Men’s Wearhouse, with clothing comps of 7.2% driven by higher transactions per store and rental comps of 0.7%. Separately, comps at Jos. A Bank decreased 14.6%, which was far below previous expectations driven by a decrease in traffic.

Doug Ewert, CEO of Men’s Wearhouse commented on Jos. A Bank:

When we acquired Joseph Bank, we knew that we needed to correct the promotional model. However, we underestimated the impact to the near-term performance as we began to execute the difficult, but necessary, corrective steps. We remain confident that these steps will restore a long-term, sustainable, profit model and reshape the business for a healthy and growing Jos. A. Bank.

[nativounit]
Excluding Jos. A. Bank, total gross margin decreased by 158 basis points, while retail gross margin decreased 168 basis points, primarily driven by the clearance of merchandise through the e-commerce channel.

On the books, the company had $53.7 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared to $64.7 million in the same period from the previous year.

Ewert continued:

We are also taking additional steps to course correct. We are currently performing a deep dive on data analysis using both our customer data and a third party to uncover actionable insights. With the topline resetting to a lower level for the near-term, we are looking at every opportunity for cost reduction including store rationalization, labor, advertising and all relevant shared service costs and we are partnering with Alix Partners on specific elements of this work. We are challenging all assumptions and are fully focused on accelerating the Jos. A. Bank recovery.

Shares of Men’s Wearhouse were down more than 24% at $13.90 Thursday morning, with a consensus analyst price target of $30.80 and a 52-week trading range of $17.97 to $66.18.
[recirclink id=302426]