Ascena Retail Drops on Holiday Performance

Ascena Retail Group Inc. (NASDAQ: ASNA) led the bears in Tuesday’s session as the result of a less-than-favorable holiday season. The company announced consolidated comparable sales decreased 4% over the Holiday period, which represents performance from Saturday, November 21, 2015, through Sunday, January 3, 2016. It also reaffirmed its full-year earnings per share (EPS) guidance range of $0.75 to $0.80 for the 52-week period ending July 23, 2016.

Consensus estimates call for $0.78 in EPS and revenue of $7.24 billion.

Ascena is a leading national specialty retailer offering clothing, shoes and accessories for missy and plus-size women under the Ann Taylor, LOFT, Lou & Grey, Lane Bryant, Cacique, maurices, dressbarn and Catherines brands, and for tween girls under the Justice brand.

David Jaffe, president and CEO of Ascena, commented:

The Holiday period for specialty retail was marked by soft traffic and unseasonably warm conditions, and was highly competitive. Excluding the planned decline at Justice, consolidated comparable sales were flat to last year.

Jaffe continued:

Consistent with performance over the Black Friday week, performance was mixed across our portfolio through the holiday period. We were very pleased with the positive comp trend that we continue to see at Lane Bryant. Inventory levels were down significantly to last year across our ANN Brands and at Justice, which helped drive significant gross margin rate improvement. Justice’s negative comp sales performance was in line with our expectations, and the brand is set up well for the upcoming transition to Spring. Our maurices and Catherines brands faced very strong performance last year, with compounded two-year growth up high single digits at both brands. Finally, we saw a modest improvement in trend at dressbarn, with roughly flat comp performance over a two year period.

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He concluded:

We remain comfortable with our full year outlook, and are reaffirming our earnings per share guidance range of $0.75 to $0.80. We were a bit disappointed with our overall Holiday sales performance, and expect second quarter earnings per share will be below the $0.02 we had guided to at our December earnings call. We now see second quarter earnings per share between breakeven and ($0.03). However, inventories are very well controlled across ascena as we transition into the Spring season, and we are pleased with the continuing turnaround at Justice.

Shares of Ascena were trading down nearly 11% at $8.62 Tuesday morning, with a consensus analyst price of $16.77 and a 52-week trading range of $8.49 to $17.59.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.