Back-to-school proved to be a success for Caleres, the Missouri-based owner of Famous Footwear and Dr. Scholl’s, which posted its third quarter results on Tuesday.
Performance was slightly above guidance, with net sales up 0.5% to $732.2 million and net income up 2 percent year-over-year. Caleres pointed to a successful back-to-school shopping season at Famous Footwear for the bump in sales with a back-to-school comp gain of 2.7%. The company reported diluted EPS of 81 cents, in line with expectations.
While Famous Footwear delivered a solid performance, Caleres’ other brands in its contemporary fashion division, including Diane von Furstenberg, suffered a sales decline of 5.2%. This was compounded by expected declines in the company’s healthy living division, which includes the Dr. Scholl’s, Ryka and Naturalizer brands.
“Despite a somewhat choppy environment, our third quarter performance, with improvement in sales, margins, earnings and cash from operations, further confirms our portfolio strategy is working as intended and delivering shareholder value,” said Diane Sullivan, Caleres CEO, president and chairman.
“Our teams did a fantastic job of continuing to adapt to changes in consumer shopping trends and as a result delivered both improved sales and gross margin,” said Ken Hannah, Caleres CFO. “We continued to return value to shareholders and strengthen our balance sheet in the third quarter, as we increased cash and equivalents by more than 100 percent and reduced our inventory by 3.6%.”