Abercrombie & Fitch's Stock Falls After Sales Miss Expectations

Abercrombie & Fitch's stock fell 2% in premarket trade Wednesday, after the teen apparel retailer missed fiscal fourth-quarter sales estimates, but topped profit expectations. For the quarter ended Jan. 31, net earnings fell to $44.4 million, or 63 cents a share, from $66.1 million, or 85 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, such as restructuring charges of $2.4 million and asset impairment charges of $28.3 million, adjusted per-share earnings were $1.15, above the FactSet consensus analyst estimate of $1.14. Total sales fell 14% to $1.12 billion, just shy of the FactSet consensus of $1.17 billion, amid a 10% drop in U.S. sales and a 20% decline in international. Same-store sales fell 10%, compared with the FactSet consensus for an 8.7% drop. For fiscal 2015, the company said in a statement that it expects "significant headwinds" on sales from currency moves, but said it expects the negative impact from reduced logo sales to "modestly abate" in the first half of the year. The stock has lost 14% in the past three months through Tuesday, while the S&P 500 has gained 1.7%.