Do you like surprises? Then chances are, you're going to love Monday's earnings report from upscale clothier Jos. A. Bank (NASDAQ:JOSB). The company has a history of making analyst estimates look conservative, beating the Street's prognosticators in each of the last four quarters. Jos. A. Bank ("Joe" to friends) reports Q4 and full-year results before market-open tomorrow.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or waffle? Eight analysts know Joe. Five of them give the stock a buy rating, and three more a hold.
  • Revenues. They predict that Joe will report 24% quarterly sales growth tomorrow, to $159 million.
  • Earnings. Think that's not sufficiently ambitious? Then try the profits prediction on for size: 40% year-over-year growth, to $0.98 per share.

What management says:
Joe's management doesn't say a whole lot in its earnings releases, preferring to let the numbers speak for themselves. Yet those numbers are like the oratory of Cicero -- providing shareholders with not just the income statement that almost every company issues, but with a full balance sheet and cash flow statement as well.

What management does:
And what do the numbers tell us?

Margins %

7/04

10/04

1/05

4/05

7/05

10/05

Gross

59.5

59.8

60.4

60.7

61.2

61.4

Op.

11.3

10.9

11.3

11.4

11.7

11.8

Net

6.2

6.1

6.6

6.7

6.9

6.8
All data courtesy of Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Data reflects trailing-12-month performance for the quarters ending in the named months.

One Fool says:
Personally, I've never cared for Joe's strategy of spending money on new "brick" stores when it can more easily make "click" sales over the Internet. If the company earns higher margins on Internet sales, why bother racking up costlier sales from brick-and-mortar stores? The strategy does appear to be proving itself sound, though. Rolling gross, operating, and net margins have all climbed upwards over the last 18 months.

Moreover, in early February, Joe released its sales numbers for the quarter. The company exceeded analyst sales estimates by 3%, hitting $163.8 million -- a 28% increase over the year-ago results. And guess which segment of Joe's business is accelerating its growth? That's right. Same-store sales from the company's "brick" locations rose 15.9% in Q4 -- quickening the 10.6% pace set over the course of 2005.

In contrast, combined catalog and Internet sales (the "click" side of the business, and the one that produces the strongest margins) decelerated from the 21.7% pace set over the course of the year to 18.9% in Q4 alone.

Competitors:

  • Men's Wearhouse (NYSE:MW)
  • Phillips-Van Heusen (NYSE:PVH)
  • Federated (NYSE:FD)

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above.