Nordstrom Inc. shares are up more than 11 percent as of 4:30 p.m. ET after the department store chain’s Q2 earnings, posted after the market close Thursday, fared much better than analysts had expected.
The company said its Q2 results received a solid nudge from its anniversary sale, which outperformed recent trends.
Net income in the quarter declined 45 percent, to $117 million, or 67 cents per diluted share, from $211 million, or $1.09 per diluted share. Those results topped analysts’ forecasts for diluted earnings per share of 56 cents.
Revenues remained flat year-over-year, at $3.6 billion, missing estimates for revenues of $3.7 billion. Comparable sales decreased 1.2 percent, compared with the same period last year.
“Over the past several quarters, our team has been actively addressing our inventory, expense and capital, and in the second quarter, made substantial progress by bringing down inventory in-line with sales,” said Blake Nordstrom, co-president of Nordstrom, in a release. “Those efforts, along with the strength of our anniversary sale and a great response from customers to that event, drove better than expected results for the second quarter.”
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Across U.S. full-line stores and Nordstrom.com, the company said its top-performing merchandise categories were beauty and shoes.
Nordstrom upward-adjusted its earnings expectations for the fiscal year to reflect the most recent quarter. It now expects diluted EPS in the range of $2.60 to $2.75, compared with its prior outlook for EPS in the range of $2.50 to $2.70.
