Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Home Furnishings Retailer Pier 1 Cuts Outlook for Fiscal 2015
February 11,
2015 by in Financial Reports, Furniture Retailing, Industry 
Retailer Pier 1 (NASDAQ: PIR) slashed its profit and sales outlook for fiscal 2015 after market close Tuesday afternoon.
The company said softer than expected sales in January and February coupled with higher than forecasted expenses will impact the results.
Shares tumbled in after-hours trading. Pier 1 shares dropped $5.27, or 31 percent, to $11.70 Tuesday evening.
“I am extremely disappointed that we will not achieve our prior financial guidance,” said Alex Smith, president and CEO. “Following a strong holiday period, we registered respectable company comparable sales growth of 5.7 percent in January—but the results were well below our forecast, which had overestimated the recapture of lost sales from last year’s storms. This is also causing us to take a more cautious view of sales for February.”
Smith said the revised outlook takes into account the sales shortfall along with unplanned supply chain expenses, some of which will continue into the first quarter of fiscal 2016.
“The failure to adequately forecast the revenue and expenses in our business is a financial issue which has been aggressively addressed,” Smith said. “From a brand and competitive perspective, our business is sound. Sales trends are in the mid-single-digits and customer response to our spring and Easter assortments has been good. Equally important, we are managing our promotional cadence well, with promotional discounts below last year. We are also continuing to experience momentum in e-commerce sales penetration, which exceeded 15 percent in January and is running above 10 percent year-to-date. The problems impacting our fourth quarter financial results do not undermine our confidence in our 1 Pier 1 strategy, our customers’ view of the Pier 1 Imports brand, or our ability to move toward the productivity levels we enjoyed as a brick-and-mortar retailer now that our transition to omni-channel is nearly complete.”
The retailer will release its fourth quarter and full-year fiscal 2015 earnings results on April 8 for the period ending Feb. 28.