Shoe Carnival Beats Q4 Expectations, Shares Jump After Hours

Shares of Shoe Carnival Inc. (NASDAQ: SCVL) jumped over 9 percent in after-hours trading after the company reported stronger-than-expected results for the fourth quarter. The Evansville, Indiana-based company reported a quarterly profit of $3 million, or $0.15 per share, versus a year-ago profit of $598,000, or $0.03 per share. The latest quarter results included around $0.03 per share in additional expense within cost of sales attributable to the west coast port congestion.Its net sales gained 13.6 percent to $227.6 million from $200.3 million. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.09 per share on revenue of $220.20 million.Its comparable store sales climbed 9.5 percent in the quarter.Shoe Carnival's gross margin widened to 28.6 percent, versus 28.5 percent, in the year-ago period.During the fourth quarter, Shoe Carnival opened 1 new store, versus 3e stores in the year-ago quarter."We were pleased with our strong comparable store sales performance in the fourth quarter driven by broad based gains across all of our footwear categories. Although favorable weather played an important role in our strong performance, we believe our key initiatives of national advertising, better brands in our women's department and aggressive multi-channel initiatives continued to bring new customers to our stores, e-commerce site, and mobile touchpoints," said Cliff Sifford, President and CEO.Shoe Carnival projects FY15 earnings of $1.40 to $1.48 per share on sales of $977 million to $991 million. Analysts had expected earnings of $1.45 per share on sales of $995.7 million.It expects comparable store sales to rise 1.5 percent to 3 percent in the full year.Shoe Carnival shares climbed 9.41 percent to $26.50 in after-hours trading.