Wet Seal Earnings: Here’s Why Shares are Down Now

Wet Seal Inc (NASDAQ:WTSL) had a loss and met 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 down 1%.

Wet Seal Inc Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results: Adjusted Earnings Per Share decreased to $-0.06 in the quarter versus EPS of $0.03 in the year-earlier quarter.

Revenue: Decreased 0% to $161.7 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: reported adjusted EPS loss of $0.06 per share. By that measure, the company missed the mean analyst estimate of $-0.06. It beat the average revenue estimate of $160.88 million.

Quoting Management: John D. Goodman, chief executive officer of The Wet Seal, Inc., stated, “Fiscal 2012 was a challenging year for the Company, marked by changes in leadership, strategic direction and brand positioning, which had a significant impact on our financial performance. During the past two months, our team has moved quickly to begin stabilizing the business, get back to Wet Seal’s fast fashion roots and prepare for growth. Additionally, we have taken meaningful action to reduce expenses, control inventories and leverage the core strengths of our team members.

“Our merchandising and field organizations are excited about our renewed focus on the core customer and we are effecting change in the assortments as quickly as possible. At the same time, we’re improving the visual presentation in the stores and developing marketing programs and partnerships designed to influence our Wet Seal customers.

“We have also implemented strategic merchandising changes at Arden B, which are enabling us to gain traction in key product categories and drive improvement in overall business trends.”

Key Stats (on next page)…