What: G-III Apparel Group Ltd. (GIII -2.37%), the maker of licensed apparel for brands like Calvin Klein and Cole Haan, badly missed estimates in its fourth quarter earnings report, sending shares down 17.2% as of 12:47 p.m EST Tuesday. The company posted a profit of just $0.17 per share, well below estimates at $0.42. Revenues, meanwhile, grew 2.5% to $527.4 million, which was well short of expectations at $566.4 million.
So what: Like many other apparel companies, G-III blamed the weak performance in part on warm winter weather. CEO Morris Goldfarb said its outerwear business was "heavily affected by the warmest winter on record," and weakness in outerwear was fully responsible for the poor results. He did credit the performance of the non-outerwear Calvin Klein business as well as dress, team sports, and G.H. Bass for growth, but it was not enough to outweigh the outerwear issues.
Several retailers pointed to the warm weather as an excuse for a slow quarter, a common scapegoat in the industry. While profits grew modestly in the quarter, earnings per share shrunk more than 60% from $0.48 a year ago due to higher promotion costs and disappointing outerwear sales.
Now what: Looking ahead, G-III's prospects don't seem much better as the company's full-year guidance was also significantly lower than expectations. Management is projected EPS of $2.55-$2.65 for fiscal 2017, modestly above last year's $2.44, but short of the analyst consensus of $3.14.
With a disappointing quarter and guidance like that, today's drop seems deserved. I wouldn't expect G-III's performance to improve as long as weakness remains in the apparel industry.
