TJX Companies Beats Earnings and Revenue Estimates, But Same Store Sales Come Up Short

released its Q2 results before the open on Tuesday. Earnings per share came in above Wall Street consensus expectations, however, shares shares fell 3.52 percent due to the company's low same store sales growth compared with last year. TJX Companies reported EPS of $0.84 and revenues of $7.9 billion. Analyst consensus had an EPS estimate of $0.81 and revenues of $7.85 billion. Consolidated comparable store sales increased 4 percent druing Q2 vs. last year's 6 percent growth. Among the greatest disparities between year over year metrics was TJX Europe and Australia's 2 percent SSS growth vs. last year's 5 percent and Homegood's (U.S.) 5 percent SSS growth vs. 9% last year. TJX Companies saw Q3 EPS at $0.83-$0.85 vs. estimates of $0.9 and Q3 Same Store Sales (SSS) Growth of 2-3 percent. Company management raised FY17 forecasts for comp sales to increase 3% to 4% and earnings per share to be in the range of $3.39 to $3.43. "We are extremely pleased that our comp store sales growth was almost entirely driven by customer traffic. We are convinced that we are gaining consumer market share as our excellent values on a compelling selection of brands and fashions are drawing customers to our retail brands around the world. We also are very pleased that our apparel, including accessories, and home businesses both performed well," said Ernie Herrman, CEO and president. Further, we saw a strong merchandise margin increase. We believe our robust sales, customer traffic and merchandise margins all speak to the strength of our off-price retail model," stated Herrman The CEO added, "The third quarter is off to a solid start, and we see plentiful opportunities for our business in the second half of the year and beyond. We remain laser focused on achieving our goals for 2016 and are passionate about surpassing them. We continue on the road to becoming a $40 billion-plus company!" At the time of writing, TJX Companies traded at $79.86 in Tuesday's pre-market session.