Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of Lands' End (LE -0.50%) were down 10.5% as of 12:20 p.m. Friday after the clothing retailer on Thursday announced disappointing fiscal-first-quarter results.
So what: Quarterly net revenue fell 9.4% year over year to $299.4 million, driven in part by a modest decline in domestic direct businesses, and more so by a $15 million decline from international businesses. The latter included a $9 million negative impact from changes in foreign exchange rates. This translated to a 45.2% decline in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to $13.1 million, and a steep 84% plunge in net income to $1.7 million, or $0.05 per diluted share. Analysts, on average, were expecting even lower earnings of $0.03 per share, but on significantly higher revenue of $320.5 million.
Now what: Lands' End CEO Federica Marchionni first noted the results reflected a "challenging retail environment," then elaborated, "While there is certainly work to be done, the Company has the powerful elements to be a meaningful global lifestyle brand over time. The next 12 to 18 months will be an important transformational period where we will be focused on upgrading the product design and development process, enhancing our technology platform, fostering brand awareness, exploring new distribution opportunities, strengthening operations and integrating new talent throughout the organization."
That's fair enough, and I admire Marchionni's admission that Lands' End has plenty of work ahead to improve its operations. But given its steep declines in profitability and the broad scope of this impending business transformation, I personally prefer to stay away from Lands' End stock until we get a better idea of how its turnaround efforts are coming along over the next few quarters.
