Clothing retailer The Talbots Inc has announced total company sales for fiscal March, the five weeks ended April 1st 2006, decreased 3 percent to $195.4 million from $201.7 million for the five weeks ended April 2nd 2005.
Same-store sales decreased 3.4 percent for the month. Year to date sales for the nine weeks ended April 1st 2006 decreased 3 percent to $286.8 million, compared to $294.7 million reported for the nine weeks ended April 2nd 2005. Same-store sales decreased 4.2 percent for the nine-week period.
Arnold Zetcher, Chairman, President and CEO said, "While our March comparable store sales trends were on or near plan during most of the month, we saw a sharper than expected decline in customer demand in the third and fourth weeks of the period. We believe this was partially due to the shift of the Easter holiday to three weeks later versus last year.”
"In order to build momentum in our business, we will be making adjustments to our marketing program for April. As a result, our forecast for the combined March/April period remains consistent with our earlier expectation for flat to slightly positive comparable store sales," continued Zetcher.
"However, given the additional markdowns resulting from the change in our promotional strategy and the sizeable miss in March's catalog sales, we are revising our expectations for first quarter earnings per share to be in the range of $0.49 to $0.53, including approximately $0.03 in estimatedstock option expense. This compares to our previously announced expectation of $0.61 to $0.65.
marketing@alchempro.com
