Whether it's something dressy from Polo (NYSE:RL) or Oxford (NYSE:OXM), outdoor gear from Columbia (NASDAQ:COLM), or a pair of work jeans from VF (NYSE:VFC), when you spend cash for clothes, you often benefit a public company. If you only buy three dress shirts in your lifetime, chances are one of them is marketed by Phillips-Van Heusen (NYSE:PVH), a company with style to spare.
Yesterday, the company announced quarterly numbers that were fashionably ahead of estimates, thanks to higher-than-expected growth across several areas. Investors were delighted to hear that the company's core product, dress shirts, had excellent sales growth, as did the new Calvin Klein line of sportswear. Overall, revenues were up 25% over Q1 of last year, and net income came in at $0.46 per diluted share compared to a Q1 loss in 2004.
With double-digit growth in the core business, what's not to like? A few things, actually. The first is nothing unusual: The company is diluting shares with options, but doesn't expense them on the income statement. This means that the diluted earnings per share reported in the press release yesterday are actually quite lower. To find out how much lower, check out the last part of note 1 to the financials in the most recent annual report.
Another item that throws off reported earnings is the agreement the company struck with Mr. Calvin Klein himself. Phillips-Van Heusen acquired Calvin Klein (the company, not the man) in early 2003. In addition to Phillips-Van Heusen's $430 million in cash and stock, Mr. Klein now receives 1.15% of the total worldwide net sales of any Calvin Klein products through the year 2017.
That's actually worse for Phillips-Van Heusen than it sounds. Since the company licenses out the Calvin Klein name to folks like Warnaco (NASDAQ:WRNC), it is only slated to receive 7% or so of their total sales. This makes Mr. Klein's slice of the income generated from his namesake products fairly large. The company paid Mr. Klein $17 million in 2003 and $22 million in 2004, but reports this as an addition to goodwill, not a direct expense. When calculating the true owner earnings for the period, this figure must be subtracted out.
Things like these pop up when reading through the footnotes of financial statements. They shouldn't necessarily scare investors away, but they should be included when calculating future cash flows. Despite the share dilution and Mr. Klein's cut, the company has several things going for it. If it can successfully squeeze more income out of the Calvin Klein brand while growing its core dress-shirt business, the company will continue to post up solid growth numbers.
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Fool contributor Matt Thurmond owns no shares in any company mentioned above.
