Francesca's Trades Higher By 80% On Q2 Earnings

Francesca's Holdings FRAN reported second-quarter earnings of 72 cents per share, up from earnings of 1 cent per share from the same period last year.

The company reported quarterly sales of $106 million, which missed the analyst consensus estimate of $119.31 million by 11.16%. This is a 6.22 decrease over sales of $113.025 million the same period last year.

"We are very pleased to see significant improvement in our comparable sales for the second quarter,” said Michael Prendergast, interim CEO of Francesca's. “After a long period of double digit comp sales declines we achieved considerable sequential improvement in our comp sales in each month within the quarter.

"Gross margin was impacted by aggressive markdowns on poor performing legacy products that we accelerated within the quarter. However, we saw strong and better than expected sell through on new merchandise. Our merchant teams have done an excellent job of shifting back to a "read and react" buying and planning strategy, resulting in more nimble buying and planning processes.”

Francesca's shares were trading up 84% at $9.50 in Tuesday’s pre-market session. The stock has a 52-week high of $74.64 and a 52-week low of $2.78.