Avon Products Inc. (NYSE: AVP) reported its fourth-quarter financial results before the markets opened on Thursday. The company had a net loss of $0.01 per share on $1.6 billion in revenue. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters had called for $0.08 in earnings per share (EPS) on revenue of $1.82 billion. In the same period of the previous year, the company posted EPS of $0.20 and $2.34 billion in revenue.
It’s worth noting that foreign currency had a huge impact on the earnings in this report — -$0.16 per share.
Revenues declined 20% in this quarter, but they increased 3% in constant dollars, excluding the divestiture of Liz Earle. Additionally, the year-over-year comparison is affected by certain tax items in Brazil.
Excluding the impacts of Liz Earle and certain Brazil tax items, constant-dollar revenue would have grown approximately 6%2. The company’s Latin America markets experiencing high inflation (Venezuela and Argentina) contributed approximately three points to this constant-dollar revenue growth.
At the same time, gross margin was 58.7%, down 280 basis points. Adjusted gross margin was 58.8%, down 270 basis points. These year-over-year comparisons were negatively affected by roughly 70 basis points due to the combined impact of the VAT credits in 2014 and the IPI tax in 2015.
Sheri McCoy, CEO of Avon, commented on earnings:
Our operating performance for the fourth quarter and fiscal year was in-line with our most recent outlook. Looking back at 2015, our key local markets drove steady improvement in overall performance. Importantly, we improved year-on-year Active Representative trends – with full-year growth of 1%. We are on track to close our partnership with Cerberus and fully engaged in executing our transformation plan.
On the books, cash and cash equivalents totaled $686.9 million at the end of the fourth quarter, compared to $936.4 million in the same period from last year.
Shares of Avon were trading down roughly 15% at $2.76 on Thursday, with a consensus analyst price target of $4.52 and a 52-week trading range of $ 2.21 to $9.47.
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