Bujsiness news : Lululemon Lowers Q4 Forecast, Expects Negative Comps

Lululemon Athletica Inc. lowered its net revenue and earnings guidance for the fourth quarter ended Feb. 2  by roughly 4 and 9 percent respectively due to a pronounced deceleration in traffic and sales since Dec. 31.

The famous yoga brand now anticipates that net revenue will be in the range of $513 million to $518 million for the fourth fiscal quarter based on comparable-store sales in the negative low-to-mid single digits on a constant-dollar basis. This compares to the company's previous guidance of net revenue in the range of $535 million to $540 million for the fourth quarter based on flat comparable-store sales on a constant-dollar basis. The company also now expects diluted earnings per share will be in the range of $0.71 to $0.73 for the quarter. The previous EPS guidance for the fourth quarter was a range of $0.78 to $0.80. EPS guidance continues to assume 146.0 million diluted weighted-average shares outstanding and a 30.0% tax rate.

"We were on track to deliver on our sales and earnings guidance through the month of December; however, since the beginning of January, we have seen traffic and sales trends decelerate meaningfully,” said Lululemon CFO John Currie. “Based on this recent performance and assuming these trends continue through the remainder of January, we are reducing our outlook for the fourth quarter.

"As we end 2013, we are starting to see the results of the significant investments we made throughout this past year to strengthen and enhance our back-of-house product operations structure,” Currie continued. “While we realize that it will require continued investment and time to get to best-in-class status, with our new leadership in place we are very focused on building on this stronger foundation to execute our long-term growth strategies."

Management will be meeting with analysts and investors and presenting at the ICR XChange Conference in Orlando this week.

By press release