Ascena Retail Group Earnings: Here’s Why the Stock is Up Now

Ascena Retail Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASNA) delivered a profit and beat Wall Street’s expectations, AND beat the revenue expectation. The revenue beat is a positive sign to shareholders seeking high growth out of the company. Shares are up 13.13%.

Ascena Retail Group, Inc. Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Adjusted Earnings Per Share decreased 36.59% to $0.26 in the quarter versus EPS of $0.41 in the year-earlier quarter.

Revenue: Rose 43.56% to $1.24 billion from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: Ascena Retail Group, Inc. reported adjusted EPS income of $0.26 per share. By that measure, the company beat the mean analyst estimate of $0.23. It beat the average revenue estimate of $1.23 billion.

Quoting Management: David Jaffe, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ascena Retail Group, Inc., commented, “Our second quarter performance reflects a difficult holiday season during which we utilized promotion and markdown strategies to manage inventory for an effective transition to Spring assortments. We expect the challenging environment to continue and have adjusted our sales, promotion, and inventory plans accordingly. These actions, combined with strong expense controls and our acceleration of productivity programs, give us confidence in our ability to achieve our full-year 2013 earnings expectations despite the market condition.”

Key Stats (on next page)…