Abercrombie off the mark in 3Q as turnaround efforts sputter

Abercrombie shares are down 14.3% in Friday trading.

After years of promising a pivot from its dark, perfumed stores and highly sexualized marketing, teen apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch finally began to unveil a brighter, more streamlined approach to stores and a concerted effort to be more inclusive in its marketing. The athletic shoe store chain earned $1.17 a share during the quarter, up from 57 cents a share a year earlier and 7 cents above consensus.

The same-store sales decline was partially due to headwinds at flagship and tourism stores, said Fran Horowitz-Bonadies, Abercrombie’s chief merchandising officer, on the company’s earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.

Abercrombie’s net sales fell 6.5 percent to $821.73 million, down for the 15th straight quarter. Third-quarter profit declined almost 18%, while sales dropped for their seventh straight quarter. (NYSE:ANF)’s 20-Day Simple Moving Average is -1.57%. Following Earnings result, share price were UP 14 times out of last 27 Qtrs. The Nasdaq composite touched a record high, but turned lower and gave up 16 points, or 0.3 percent, to 5,318. ANF has been in a channel of lower highs and lows since 2011, and now sits down over 45% so far in 2016, touching an eight-year low last week. We are reviewing our $16 target price (17x our 2017 EPS estimate of $0.95). Analysts had forecast a figure of 21 cents.

In addition to a same-store sales decline of 14% at the Abercrombie brand, sales fell 13% to $358.3 million. Shares registered one year high at $32.14 and the one year low of $14.00. This firm now has YTD (year to date) performance of -35.52 Percent which is not good. (NYSE:ANF) now have an ABR of 2.85, derived from a total of 20 opinions. The firm has a SMA 50 (Simple Moving Average) of 6.04% and a SMA 200-(Simple Moving Average) of -22.12%. Its weekly and monthly volatility is 5.72%, 4.04% respectively. Following the purchase, the director now directly owns 57,398 shares in the company, valued at $1,013,074.70. This Retail-Wholesale Sector stock now has the Market Capitalization of 1.15 Billion. The company’s price to sales ratio for trailing twelve months is 0.29 and price to book ratio for most recent quarter is 0.81, whereas price to cash per share for the most recent quarter is 2.18. Standpoint Research upgraded Abercrombie & Fitch Co. from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 30th. Copper dipped 2 cents to $2.47 a pound. It is not terribly uncommon for a news report to generate so much buzz that it changes demand to the point where large gap can be seen on a chart.