What happened
Shares of Skechers USA Inc. (NYSE: SKX) fell more than 26% on Friday after the footwear company announced solid first-quarter 2018 results, but followed with disappointing forward guidance.
Skechers’ quarterly sales grew 16.5% year over year, to $1.25 billion, which translated to 25.2% growth in net income, to $117.7 million, or $0.75 per share — though the latter also included a $0.07-per-share benefit from discrete tax items related to recent U.S. tax reform. Analysts, on average, were looking for the same earnings on lower revenue of $1.20 billion.
So what
“We achieved yet another record sales quarter and continued to see significant growth across all our business segments including comp store sales increases of 9.5% worldwide,” added Skechers chief operating officer David Weinberg.
Skechers’ domestic revenue rose 8.5% during the quarter, international sales climbed 17.9%, and — helped by new locations and the aforementioned comps growth — retail sales jumped 26.4%. All told, international wholesale and retail sales combined now represent around 54% of Skechers’ total.
Now what
For the second quarter, however, Skechers is targeting sales in the range of $1.120 billion to $1.145 billion and earnings per diluted share ranging from $0.38 to $0.43. By comparison, most investors were looking for second-quarter earnings of $0.54 per share on sales of $1.16 billion.
That said, Skechers explained that its outlook includes an expected shift in shipments from “several key international distributors and domestic accounts” from the second quarter to the back half of 2018. So it seems that its guidance shortfall relative to expectations is at least, in part, an issue of timing, and not necessarily indicative of deeper underlying problems with the business.
If that’s the case, today’s pullback might well prove to be a compelling buying opportunity. But in the meantime, it’s no surprise to see some investors taking a step back from Skechers stock right now.
