Shares of Lululemon tank as retailer calls for lower profit, sales in Q1

Shares of Lululemon Athletica Inc. tanked 17% late Wednesday after the apparel retailer missed fourth-quarter per-share earnings expectations and called for lower profits and sales for the current quarter. Lululemon said it earned $136 million, or 99 cents a share, in the fiscal fourth quarter, compared with $117 million, or 85 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted per-share earnings reached $1 in the quarter. Revenue rose 12% to $790 million in the quarter, compared with $704 million a year ago. Total same-store sales rose 8%, the company said. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected per-share earnings of $1.01 on sales of $783 million. Same-store sales growth had been pegged at 5.4%. Lululemon said it expects net revenue in the range of $510 million to $515 million in the first quarter, based on a total comparable sales decrease in the low-single digits. Per-share earnings are expected to be in the range of 25 cents to 27 cents for the quarter. The analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected first-quarter earnings of 39 cents a share on sales of $553 million. Full fiscal 2017 guidance was above expectations, however, with the retailer saying it expects net revenue in the range of $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion and per-share earnings between $2.26 to $2.36 for the full year. The FactSet expectations for fiscal 2017 is per-share earnings of $2.16 and sales of $2.3 billion. Shares had ended the regular session up 4.1%.

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