Retail

L Brands Disappoints With March Sales

Chris Lange

Published: April 12, 2018 12:10 pm

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 1:29 am

L Brands Inc. (NYSE: LB) watched its shares shift lower Thursday after the company released its March sales numbers. Although sales increased for the month, this didn’t seem to be enough for investors. We can look forward to the L Brands quarterly report in the middle of May.

The company reported that net sales increased 7% to $1.02 billion for the five weeks ended April 7, 2018, compared to net sales of $951.4 million for the five weeks last year. Comparable sales for the period increased 4% from last year.

L Brands also had net sales of $1.874 billion for the nine weeks ended April 7 this year, an increase of 9% compared to sales of $1.717 billion for the same period last year. Comparable sales increased 3% in this time as well.

Thomson Reuters has consensus estimates calling for $0.19 in EPS on $2.59 billion in revenue for the fiscal first quarter. The same period of last year reportedly had $0.33 in EPS and revenue of $2.44 billion.

Over the past 52 weeks, L Brands has underperformed the broad markets, with its stock down about 20% in this time. However, the numbers get even worse in 2018, with the stock down 37% year to date.

Shares of L Brands were last seen down about 5% at $36.01, with a consensus analyst price target of $48.33 and a 52-week range of $35.00 to $63.10.