Even if you don’t care about Hibbett Sports (HIBB), today you do/should. Perma-shorts are sighted less than Bigfoot, but when a company has no online presence because Nike says “don’t even think about doing that” ... you know it’s bad. Our call for earnings going from $4.80 to $1.32 might prove bullish. #perma
- Hibbett pre-announced 2Q this morning…EPS guided to about a 20 cent LOSS, vs Street at 15 cents in earnings.
- Comps guided at -10%, for context the worst comp in the recession for HIBB was -6.6%.
- Gross margins are guided to be down significantly, our math says in the 300-400bps range.
- The company gave little detail on the issues here, simply noting challenging sales trends. In other words, it does not have a clue.
- Margins peaked at 14% in FY12. Were 9.9% last year. Are tracking 6.6% this year. En route to 3%.
- Lesson here…at each stopping point, people probably thought ‘damn, I missed it.”
There’s more of these out there. There’s also the inverse though.
Here’s what we said in our HIBB Black Book Feb 6, 2015.
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