NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Foot Locker (FL) - Get Report are up 2.29% to $60.73 in late morning trading today as Canaccord Genuity raised its price target to $70 from $61.

The New York City-based athletic shoe and apparel retailer reported fourth quarter results on Friday that topped analysts' estimates.

"Footwear comps were up +teens as basketball and running grew. The momentum in basketball does not appear to be fading as Jordan, LeBron, KD and Kobe remain in high demand, coupled with strong response to new introductions such as Under Armour (UA) - Get Report's Curry 1," analysts noted as they reiterated their "buy" rating.

Given the strong product pipeline for the remainder of the year, Canaccord Genuity believes basketball will continue to outperform in footwear. In addition, lifestyle running and boots continue to benefit from the strength in athletic/casual.

Gross margin is expected to be flat to slightly up, improving merchandise margin, offset by FX, and SG&A is expected to lever by 50 to 60bps, analysts said. Foot Locker plans to open about 20 net stores with new stores concentrated in kids, Europe and SIX:02.

Insight from TheStreet's Research Team:

Foot Locker is a core holding of Bryan Ashenberg and Bob Lang's Trifectastocks.com. This is what the they had to say about the earnings report:

Model portfolio holding Foot Locker reported Friday much-better-than-expected fourth-quarter results, given the rough weather and port delays. We are not taking any action in this Alert. 

Foot Locker posted fourth-quarter sales of $1.91 billion, up 6.7% year over year (10.1% ex-foreign exchange) and ahead of consensus estimates of $1.87 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) came in at $1, ahead of consensus estimates of $0.91. At 10.2%, fourth-quarter same-store-sales comparisons also came in ahead of consensus estimates of about 6% and compares with 6.9% last quarter. This was all achieved with currency headwinds that hurt sales growth by 3.4%. The company said it would share its next set of financial goals at the company's investor day on March 16.

On the balance sheet, inventory growth was 2.5% on a sales increase of 6.7%. The company also ended the quarter with $967 million in cash. Management continued to execute its share- repurchase program and acquired $131 million worth of shares in the quarter at an average price of $55.98. The company now has a new $1 billion share repurchase program in place. The board also announced an increase to the company's quarterly dividend to $0.25 per share.

We remain bullish on this cash-rich, still-undervalued retail play that has a growing European presence.

- Bryan Ashenberg and Bob Lang, 'Foot Locker Reports Strong Results' originally published 3/6/2015 on Trifectastocks.com.

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Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates FOOT LOCKER INC as a Buy with a ratings score of A+. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

"We rate FOOT LOCKER INC (FL) a BUY. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and reasonable valuation levels. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows weak operating cash flow." You can view the full analysis from the report here: FL Ratings Report