Earnings Call Excerpt
The Dress Barn, Inc. (DBRN)
F2Q09 Earnings Call
February 18, 2009 4:30 pm ET
Executives
David R. Jaffe – President, Chief Executive Officer
Armand Correia – Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Keith Fulsher – Chief Merchandising Officer of Dress Barn
Lisa Rhodes – Chief Merchandising Officer of Maurice's
Analysts
Christopher Kim – J.P. Morgan
Scott Krasik – CL King
Samantha Panella – Raymond James
Robin Murchison – Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey
Margot Murtaugh – Snyder Capital
Brian Ronnick – BLR Capital Partners
Presentation
Operator
Welcome everyone to the Dress Barn Inc. second quarter fiscal 2009 conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later the company will hold a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and will be available for replay later today. Information on how to access the replay is available in the earnings news release issued earlier today.
I would like to remind participants that remarks made by management during the course of this call may contain forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to and within the meaning of the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future results to differ material from such statements. Those risks and uncertainties are described in today’s news release as well as the company’s filing with the SEC.
I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. David Jaffe, President and CEO. Mr. Jaffe, you may begin.
David R. Jaffe
Thank you for joining us today to review our second quarter fiscal 2009 financial results. Joining me are Armand Correia CFO, Keith Fulsher and Lisa Rhodes Chief Merchandising Officers for Dress Barn stores and Maurice’s stores respectively.
As an overview, we are in an unprecedented economic environment, which our second quarter financial results reflect. We are determined to react prudently. We posted a loss of $0.02 per share in our second quarter well below our original plan. This compares to our EPS of $0.12 last year.
The swing factor was comparable store sales and the discounting necessary to clear inventory. Consolidated comp sales for the quarter were minus 4%, minus 6 at Dress Barn and minus 2 at Maurice’s. In addition to the markdown pressure in gross margin, we saw some de-leveraging of our SG&A. That said we were successful in keeping our inventory at a manageable level.
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