Some retailers provided early holiday results on Monday that showed the crucial shopping season was solid, but didn’t blow away expectations.
Lululemon, which is preparing for a new CEO and staring down a proxy battle with its founder, said in a release it expects its holiday quarter to be “toward the high end” of its previously released guidance. Shoe maker Birkenstock and thrift store Savers Value Village also released lackluster early holiday results, while Abercrombie & Fitch cut the high end of its guidance. Meanwhile, American Eagle and Five Below bucked the trend and raised their guidance after better-than-expected holiday results.
Lululemon said it expects fiscal fourth quarter revenue to be close to $3.60 billion and earnings to be close to $4.76 per share. Both figures are at the high end of the guidance the company released in December when it announced fiscal third-quarter earnings.
It made no changes to its previous guidance for gross margin, effective tax rate and selling, general and administrative expenses.
Shares were slightly higher in premarket trading.
“We remain focused on executing our action plan to drive improvement in our U.S. business and look forward to the opportunities in front of us,” finance chief Meghan Frank said in a statement.
When announcing last quarter’s earnings on Dec. 11, outgoing CEO Calvin McDonald said the company was “encouraged” by its early holiday performance but acknowledged wide discounting had driven demand during the Thanksgiving holiday period. When the shopping stretch ended, trends slowed, he said at the time.
Like other higher-end brands, Lululemon has historically been very selective with discounts, but it has used them more liberally in recent quarters to offload old merchandise and styles that weren’t resonating with shoppers.
During its fiscal third quarter, margins fell by 2.9 percentage points, due primarily to higher tariffs and the bigger markdowns, it said at the time.
Abercrombie & Fitch shares dropped about 17% in premarket trading after the retailer cut the high end of its guidance despite posting what it called “record” quarter-to-date sales.
It’s now expecting full-year sales to grow “at least 6%,” down from a prior range of between 6% and 7%. It anticipates its operating margin, a closely watched metric on Wall Street, will be around 13%, compared to a previously expected range of between 13% and 13.5%. The company expects earnings per share to be between $10.30 and $10.40, trimmed from prior guidance of between $10.20 and $10.50.
“Our team remained on offense across product, voice, and experience, resulting in record quarter-to-date net sales through fiscal December, aligned with our expectations,” CEO Fran Horowitz said in a news release. “Importantly, we delivered balanced growth across our regions, brands, and channels.”
Birkenstock, which didn’t provide specific holiday-quarter guidance last year, said it expects sales in the quarter ended Dec. 31 to grow 11% to €402 million ($470 million). The results appeared to disappoint investors, with shares falling about 3% in premarket trading.
Savers Value Village saw sales grow 8.4% during its holiday quarter, with comparable sales up 5.4%, excluding the impact of an extra week the company had in its calendar. Despite relatively strong growth, the company only reaffirmed its fiscal 2025 adjusted net income and EBITDA outlooks. Shares were slightly higher in premarket trading.
On the other side of the aisle, American Eagle said its holiday quarter was far better than expected, with quarter-to-date comparable sales through Jan. 3 “up in the high single digits” and sales trends positive across brands and channels.
Comparable sales at its namesake banner grew by a low single digit percentage, while comps at its intimates line Aerie were up “in the low twenties.”
American Eagle said the “record” season led it to raise its fourth quarter operating income to a range of $167 million to $170 million, up from $155 million to $160 million.
“Momentum continued in the fourth quarter with record December sales fueled by the power of our brands, with particularly strong growth at Aerie and Offline and sequential growth at American Eagle,” CEO Jay Schottenstein said in a news release. “Our customers embraced new product collections and responded to our latest marketing initiatives, with strength continuing in the post-holiday period.”
Five Below said quarter-to-date sales as of Jan. 3 rose 23.2%, while comparable sales climbed 14.5%.
“We are incredibly pleased with our holiday performance, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the strategies we have been executing this year. With our maniacal focus on the customer: the kid and the kid in all of us, we offered amazing, trend-right products at exceptional value and began to create a better-connected customer journey,” CEO Winnie Park said in a news release. “In combination with tight-knit collaboration and alignment throughout the company, we drove strong, broad-based results.”
The company is now expecting fiscal fourth quarter sales to be around $1.71 billion, up from a previous range of between $1.58 billion and $1.61 billion, as it roughly doubled its comparable sales outlook to 14%, up from between 6% and 8%.
It’s expecting earnings per share to be between $3.93 to $3.98, up from previous guidance of between $3.34 to $3.52. Five Below expects adjusted earnings per share to be between $3.95 and $4, up from a prior range of between $3.36 to $3.54 per share.
The early results, which were announced ahead of the annual ICR conference in Orlando, Florida, show what many analysts had expected for the holiday shopping season. There will continue to be standouts with strong growth, but across the board, Wall Street largely anticipates results will be solid without massive, widespread gains in consumer spending.
The National Retail Federation previously forecasted retail sales in November and December would rise between 3.7% and 4.2% compared to 2024. That’s solid growth, but when higher prices from tariffs are taken into account, some analysts expect volume growth to be largely flat.
