Urban Outfitters Reports Higher Sales, Driving Profit and Margins
May 18 2016 - 6:40PM
Dow Jones News
Urban Outfitters Inc.'s sales rose 3% in the first quarter,
helping the retailer post higher profit and improved margins.
The Philadelphia retailer's results were a departure from recent
trends in a sector that has largely reported falling sales, with
data suggesting consumers are increasingly taking their money to
the Web as Internet and catalog sales rise.
Urban Outfitters' shares, down 40% over the past 12 months, rose
7.4% to $26.40 in after-hours trading.
The Philadelphia-based retailer, which opened its first store in
1970 near the University of Pennsylvania campus, has expanded into
a multinational clothing company with more than $3 billion in sales
a year under the Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropologie,
BHLDN and Terrain brands.
But sales at its two largest brands—Urban Outfitters and
Anthropologie Group, which also includes BHLDN and Terrain—had
slowed in recent quarters, and the retailer has reported lower
profit on a year-over-year basis in seven of the past nine
quarters.
In the latest period, the retailer reported comparable retail
sales at Anthropologie were flat from the year-ago period while
Urban Outfitters' sales rose 2%. Sales at Free People, however,
fell 2%.
The company defines comparable retail sales as online sales and
sales at stores open for at least 12 months.
Over all, for the period ended April 30, Urban Outfitters
reported a profit of $29.6 million, or 25 cents a share, compared
with $32.8 million, or 25 cents a share, a year earlier. The most
recent results are based on 11% fewer shares outstanding.
Sales rose 3% to $762.6 million, while comparable retail sales
rose 1%.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had projected 25 cents a
share on $760.1 million in sales.
Gross profit margin—the percentage of sales the retailer makes
after accounting for production costs—improved to 34.3% from 33.3%
a year earlier as the company discounted fewer items.
Write to Maria Armental at maria.armental@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 18, 2016 18:25 ET (22:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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