Can Abercrombie Turn Itself Around With Earnings?

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE: ANF) is set to report its fiscal third-quarter financial results before the markets open on Friday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for $0.22 in earnings per share (EPS) on $864.65 million in revenue. The same period from the previous year had $0.42 in EPS on $911.45 million in revenue.

This is a company with expectations low enough that any minor success could push its share price higher, faster than most other retailers. A holiday renaissance for Abercrombie would come at just the right time to take advantage of a new leg up in stocks that should continue through March.

Prospects for this retailer do not look great. Yet, unemployment and inflation are both very low, and the economy looks to be moving at solid pace, in fact the fastest pace in 10 years, so the fact that Abercrombie has had a rough year thus far extends beyond itself to others in the retail space.

That other competitors are struggling shows that it’s not necessarily that Abercrombie is losing its competitive edge to its rivals, but that consumers are simply spending less on clothing.

If Abercrombie is to turn around, it needs to make cheaper clothes look cool to its base in order to increase sales and its customer base at the same time. And it needs to get to its base through mobile marketing so millennials have Abercrombie on the brain the whole season. Fortunately, upper management has signaled a shift to a mobile-led business model this year. We’ll see how it works come the holidays, but it has to start with this earnings report.

Ahead of the earnings report, a few analysts weighed in on Abercrombie & Fitch:

• Mizuho has a Neutral rating and lowered its price target to $18 from $19.
• Nomura lowered its price target to $28 from $31.
• Wunderlich upgraded the stock to Hold from Sell and raised the target to $21 from $15.
• Piper Jaffray reiterated an Overweight rating with a $27 price target.

So far in 2015, the company has vastly underperformed the markets, with the stock down 29%. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is down just over 29%.

Shares of Abercrombie & Fitch were trading at $19.89 Thursday afternoon, with a consensus analyst price target of $20.67 and a 52-week trading range of $15.42 to $30.40.

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