What happened
Shares of Skechers (SKX +0.00%) climbed as much as 17.2% early Friday, then settled to trade up around 7% as of 1:30 p.m. EST after the casual footwear specialist announced strong fourth-quarter 2019 results.
IMAGE SOURCE: SKECHERS.
So what
More specifically, Skechers' quarterly sales climbed 23.1% year over year to $1.33 billion, driven by a combination of new locations and 9.9% same-store sales growth. On the bottom line, that translated to net earnings of $59.5 million, or $0.39 per share, up more than 25% from $0.31 per share in the same year-ago period. These results compared favorably to Skechers' most recent guidance, which called for sales of $1.225 billion to $1.25 billion, and earnings of $0.35 to $0.40 per share.
Skechers CEO Robert Greenberg called 2019 "a remarkable year," adding that the company also benefited from the recent "resurgence of chunky sneakers [...] as an originator in this category."
Now what
Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2020, Skechers expects revenue of $1.400 billion to $1.425 billion, and earnings per share of $0.70 to $0.75. In this case, most analysts were technically modeling higher earnings of $0.77 per share on revenue near the high end of Skechers' guidance range.
That said, the company did note that their outlook includes an early estimate of the impact of temporary store closures due to the coronavirus outbreak in China, and even warned that the estimate could change for the worse depending on the fallout surrounding the epidemic. Given Skechers' recent habit of overpromising and underdelivering, however, it seems many investors are breathing a sigh of relief that the headwinds facing this strong consumer discretionary stock aren't even more pronounced.
