Ashworth Not Even Worth Ashes

Looks like golf apparel manufacturer Ashworth (Nasdaq: ASHW  ) shanked the fourth quarter. Revenue fell more than 9% to $50.2 million, and losses widened to $4.4 million, or $0.30 per share. You can read the raw numbers, but it's apparent that even though Ashworth is a leading manufacturer of golf clothes, customers' interest is waning, perhaps for the sport and the company alike.

For example, golf-club-shaft maker Aldila (Nasdaq: ALDA  ) reported a $3 million decline in revenues in its third-quarter results back in October, while Callaway (NYSE: ELY  ) found sales off by 12% over the previous year. However, duffers weren't ubiquitous; another golf clothier, Cutter & Buck (Nasdaq: CBUK  ) , observed higher sales back in December. Its revenues rose to more than $37 million, up from the prior year's $33 million.

Ashworth has found itself in the rough these days, following a nasty proxy fight last year, a revolving door in the executive suite, and inventories that shoppers didn't want. The product glut led to deeper and more extended markdowns than anticipated. Those markdowns ended up eating into margins, which had just started to recover; they've now become threadbare.

The apparel maker's new management says it's committed to making change. Whether that change happens to include a new name remains to be seen. Managers have indicated they're willing to take a look at "alternatives," which is golfspeak for selling off the company to the highest bidder. That's sometimes the problem when everyday investors get caught up in the larger machinations of hedge funds and other activist investors, whose interests don't always coincide with theirs. Such entities might want to get the biggest return possible on their investments, as soon as possible, without allowing a newly restructured company to get itself back to the fairways.

No matter how you look at it, though, Ashworth isn't a buy right now. This country-club darling still has a lot of clothes on the rack that might make the whole operation end up on the discount shelf. With so many unknowns facing Ashworth, I'd rather take a mulligan instead and wait to see if the greens are coming into sight.

Ashworth is a one-star stock in Motley Fool CAPS. You can add your two cents to the new stock-rating service by joining today. It's free!

Fool contributor Rich Duprey does not own any of the stocks mentioned in this article. You can see his holdings here. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.