Abercrombie & Fitch Co. Earnings: Here’s Why Investors are Not Excited Now

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) delivered a profit and beat Wall Street’s expectations, BUT came up short on beating the revenue expectation. The revenue miss is a negative sign to shareholders seeking high growth out of the company. Shares are down 4%.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Adjusted Earnings Per Share increased 79.46% to $2.01 in the quarter versus EPS of $1.12 in the year-earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 10.55% to $1.47 billion from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: Abercrombie & Fitch Co. reported adjusted EPS income of $2.01 per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean analyst estimate of $1.96. It missed the average revenue estimate of $1.49 billion.

Quoting Management: Mike Jeffries, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Abercrombie & Fitch Co., said: “We are very pleased with our results for the fourth quarter. Our record sales were in line with our guidance coming into the quarter, and our earnings significantly exceeded expectations due to a strong gross margin performance for the quarter, allied with continued tight expense control. Despite a challenging U.S. retail environment over the holiday period, our core U.S. chain plus DTC comparable sales remained positive and we saw continued sequential improvement in our international business. We come into 2013 feeling very optimistic that we are well positioned to make continued strong progress over the next few years and to drive our operating margin and return on invested capital higher.”

Key Stats (on next page)…