Foot Locker Reports In Line EPS, But Shares Down

Foot Locker, Inc.

announced 3.8 percent increase in net income for the first quarter driven by 3.7 percent growth in the top line. While its earnings came in line with the estimations, revenue fell modestly. However, the stock tanked over two percent in the pre-market trading. Foot Locker reported net income of $191 million, up 3.8 percent from $184 million in the year-ago quarter. Similarly, its earnings advanced 7.8 percent to $1.39 a share from $1.29 a share in the same quarter preceding year. Street analysts also predicted the company to earn $1.39 a share. The company's revenue grew 3.7 percent to $1.987 billion from $1.916 billion in the previous year quarter. Excluding the currency impact, it would have recorded 3.9 percent growth in revenue. However, this was slightly short of the analysts' expectations of $2.0 billion. The company indicated that comparable store sales grew 2.9 percent. Foot Locker's chairman and CEO, Richard Johnson, commented, "We produced the most profitable quarter in the Company's long history, an accomplishment of which everyone at Foot Locker, Inc. should be very proud." He continued to say, "Our team navigated well through a variety of challenges, not least of which were rapidly-shifting product category preferences by our customers, to achieve our 25th consecutive quarter of meaningful sales and profit increases over the prior year. Never has it been more apparent how important is the work that we have done to build leadership positions across channels, geographies, banners, and product categories." The company's CFO, Lauren Peters, added, "We continue to manage the business tightly, particularly in terms of inventory, occupancy expense, and wages. We are focused on productivity as we work to drive top line sales, and we remain confident that we can achieve a mid-single digit comparable sales gain and a double-digit earnings per share increase for 2016." In the pre-market trading on Friday, the stock traded 2.39 percent down.