After the company reported higher-than-expected earnings last week, a Susquehanna analyst upgraded Foot Locker from "neutral" to "positive," saying the company's management is "clearly focused" on improving Foot Locker's operating structure.
FL reported strong earnings of $31 million in Q1 (20 cents per share), beating expectations of 13 cents per share. Revenue fell 7% to $1.22 billion. Earnings were boosted by lower operating expenses and higher gross margin.
FL said it secured a $200 million 4-year revolving credit facility The company may make more requests for up to $100 million.
Foot locker posted a $126 million loss for the quarter ending Jan 31, or 82 cents per share. A year earlier the company had net income of $72 million in the quarter. Excluding one-time items, net income was 24 cents per share. Analysts had predicted on average a profit of 16 cents per share.
Despite achieving a net profit in Q3, FL cuts its revenue forecast for the year. The company's Q3 sales dropped by 3.5% following a 1.7% decrease in comparable store sales as consumers wallets tightened because of the global recession.
Foot Locker reported a 1.4% increase in sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2008, despite a 0.5% decline in same store sales.
For the first quarter of fiscal 2008, Foot Locker announced net sales of $1.31 billion and an adjusted $0.14 EPS (which excludes $18 million of store closing expenses and charges), which handily beat analyst expectations for sales of $1.28 billion and met analyst estimates of $0.14 EPS.
As Foot Locker edged away from a multi-year low for its share price, the company's CEO and President, Matthew Serra, purchased approximately 100,000 shares of FL on the open market. The move signaled management's confidence in the company's future success, helping to keep the stock move up.
Foot Locker announced a net loss of $18 million and a 1.5% decrease in revenue (compared with the second quarter of 2006) in the second quarter of fiscal 2007. Same store sales decrease 7.3% on the quarter, reflecting a difficult summer selling environment in retail due to a drop in consumer spending from the subprime lending crisis. Because of lagging sales, Foot Locker management decided to significantly mark down prices in order to move slow-selling inventory, which hurt profits. However, these results were above analyst expectations, largely due to a successful quarter internationally where Foot Locker stores' profit increased approximately 20% in the quarter.
