Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Scott Krasik - C.L. King & Associates.
Scott Krasik - C.L. King & Associates
Jim, maybe if you could just comment on inventory. 6% down is great. What is it on the same-store basis? I assume it’s even better than that.
James S. Gulmi
Inventories per square foot are down for total Genesco about 11%.
Scott Krasik - C.L. King & Associates
Are you going to have to invest in inventory for the fourth quarter to get that comp or can you get these comps on this inventory level?
Robert J. Dennis
The inventories obviously in the back half go up relative to where we are now because of holiday. But on a year-over-year basis we think we’re much cleaner. We’re going to continue to be a little conservative with the way we buy. It’s an environment right now where you can chase products because most of the vendors are not as tied up as they normally would be with stocks. So we’re going to be conservative but we’re playing to our plan.
James S. Gulmi
Let me add one thing there. The situation is we had too much inventory this time last year as I think you know, and we expect to by the end of the year we probably will not be down 6%. We’ll begin to build inventory. We still should be close to where we were last year but I don’t expect us to be down 6% at year end.
Operator
Our next question comes from Analyst for Jeffrey Klinefelter - Piper Jaffray & Co.
Analyst for Jeffrey Klinefelter - Piper Jaffray & Co.
I just want to come back to the guidance comments you made. You give us a lot of great detail on the quarter and month-to-date but help us reconcile the strong performance across the P&L, sales and margins with the guidance. It would seem that you’re expecting a slowdown. And maybe just give us some direction on Q3, Q4 since we were a little bit out of range in Q2.
James S. Gulmi
You were out of range in Q2 but we did not give any guidance in the second quarter and you were below our expectations, our internal numbers. Essentially we did do a little bit better in the second quarter but we certainly exceeded your numbers, the analyst average numbers out there, but it did not exceed our internal expectations by that much. Our back half we’re holding pretty close to where it was. We’ve added a little bit there but again we did not beat the second quarter by that much internally.
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