Lululemon In Profit Slump, Soliciting Your Naked Rump

Profit Drop

Hey! Did you join the Lululemon Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2008 Earnings Results Conference Call yesterday? No? Us either! Seriously, who can stand to listen to that monotonous financial dribble drabble? Well, we’re no stock analysts, but we did read a little news today and, unsurprisingly, it seems the Lulubird report is pretty much on par with the rest of corporate business…dismal!

Lulu-in-Chief Christine Day led the call with help from money guy, CFO John E. Currie. Here are the Highlights:

• Same-store sales fell 8% (really 22 %, but 14 % was due to changes in foreign exchange rates) with 09 first quarter looking bleaker with drop expected in “low double digits”
  
• Net income fell to $10.9 million, or 16 cents per share, for the quarter that ended Feb. 1, from $14.6 million, or 22 cents per share in the same quarter last year.
• Revenue was nearly flat at $103.9 million, compared with $104 million in the prior year.
• Uncertain Outlook: Due to the uncertainty of the economy, the company said it is limiting its guidance to the current quarter. (Walmart has done the same)

Oh come on, chins up, wipe that snot! Profit still grew from 2007: $30.8 million to $39.4 million. And even though new store plans have been scaled way down, the schedule still touts 6 new lulu outposts in 2009. A little sad compared to last year’s 33, but look at it this way, that’s still 6 new windows of opportunity to offend us. And you haven’t forgotten about the internets have you?

Says Day, “We are excited to announce that we are ahead of schedule in our e-commerce strategy and now plan to launch the site in early April. We believe that our e-commerce initiative will be a great tool through which we will leverage our brand equity.”

Adding, “We expect minimal impact earnings in 2009, but based on our limited number of stores, we certainly expected business to become a meaningful for us over the next few years.”

Don’t be so coy. We know the greatness is slated to begin April 1st because we got the notice in our inbox! Along with encouragement to shop in the nude, which is suiting, because we’ll need to sell the shirt off our back to afford it!

It says “Top 10 Reasons to Shop Nude”… our favorite was the “You can shop with two hundred items in your cart without breaking your back.”

[Forbes] [The Globe and Mail]

If you really want to do that to yourself, here’s the call transcript.

Earlier… Lululemon to Announce Dismal Q4 Earnings; go Go Internet Greatness!