Five Below Posts Holiday Sales In Line With Estimates
Discount retailer Five Below Inc. (FIVE) - Get Report fell 2% Monday despite reporting a holiday season sales increase that was in line with analysts' expectations.
The Philadelphia-based company reported that net sales jumped 24.6% year over year to $526.1 million in the holiday period between Nov. 4, 2018 and Jan. 5, 2019, while comparable store sales rose 4.9%.
Despite the strong showing in the holiday season, the company only reiterated its full fourth-quarter comp expectations at between 3% and 4% growth with net sales expected to range between $593 million and $600 million, a slight increase over previous guidance.
"We are very pleased with our holiday sales results. We saw continued strong performance from our new stores and comparable sales came in ahead of our expectations," said Five Below CEO Joel Anderson.
While the sales numbers were in line with Wall Street's expectations of $598 million, investors may have been looking for more following the strong holiday period.
The stock has been one of the market's strongest over the past 12 months, including a 14% jump between Dec. 24 and Jan. 11.
The Action Alerts PLUS holding may be the victim of market circumstances, according to senior AAP researcher Zev Fima.
"We believe the initial reaction, which we would also note comes on a down day for the market overall, to be a result of profit taking more than anything else. To this point, we would call out that shares were up ~15% prior to today's move, compared to the S&P 500, which is up less than 4% year-to-date (YTD) and the RTH retail ETF, which is up less than 8% YTD," Fima said.
