Why Chico's FAS Stock Trounced the Market Today

What happened

Fashion retailer Chico’s FAS (NYSE: CHS) was looking very appealing on Tuesday, as far as its stock was concerned. Investors pushed the company’s share price up by almost 11% on a day when the S&P 500 index could only muster a gain of 0.2%. The market was obviously very impressed by the company’s latest set of quarterly results.

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So what

For its first quarter of fiscal 2023, which concluded at the end of April, Chico’s FAS booked net sales of $535 million. That was down slightly from the year-ago figure of nearly $541 million, but clearly wasn’t concerning enough to spook investors. It didn’t meet the average analyst estimate of $546 million.

Happily for Chico’s FAS, the story was different on the bottom line. According to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the fashion retailer had just under $40 million in net profit, or $0.32 per share, up from the year-ago result of $34.9 million. Those prognosticators were collectively modeling only $0.27 in per-share profitability.

Chico’s FAS’ top-line slide was due in no small part to a 0.6% year-over-year drop in comparable-store sales, plus a set of store closures. The company emphasized that the net sales tally was in line with its expectations.

It also quoted CEO Molly Langenstein as saying that during the quarter, “full-priced sales remained healthy, spend per customer and average unit retail increased year over year, and we gained market share across all brands.”

Now what

Chico’s FAS also proffered guidance for both its current second quarter and the entirety of fiscal 2023. For the latter period, it’s expecting to post net sales of almost $2.18 billion to nearly $2.21 billion, and per-share earnings of $0.70 to $0.82.