Earnings Call Excerpt
Tiffany & Co. (TIF)
F1Q09 Earnings Call
May 29, 2009 8:30 am ET
Executives
Mark L. Aaron - Vice President, Investor Relations
James N. Fernandez - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President
Presentation
Operator
Good day, everyone and welcome to this Tiffany & Company first quarter earnings conference call. Today’s call is being recorded. Participating in today’s call is Mr. Mark Aaron, Vice President of Investor Relations; and Mr. Jim Fernandez, Executive Vice President and CFO. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Aaron. Please go ahead, sir.
Mark L. Aaron
-- earlier today and by now you have hopefully had a chance to read the press release. The results reflected obvious macro challenges but met our expectations. Jim and I will comment on those results and on our outlook.
First, please note Tiffany's Safe Harbor statement, that statements made on this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Actual results might differ materially from the expectations projected in those forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is set forth in Tiffany's 2008 annual report on Form 10-K and in other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Now let’s proceed.
When we reported our full year 2008 results in March, we spelled out our cautious outlook and assumptions for the new year. The results that we reported this morning are keeping us on track to achieve our full-year plans.
Worldwide sales declined 22% in the first quarter and were down 18% on a constant exchange rate basis. Let’s look at our sales performance by region.
Sales in the Americas declined 31% in the quarter. Within that, total retail sales in the U.S. declined 32% and as we saw in the fourth quarter, more than half of the decline resulted from fewer transactions, with the remainder due to a decline in the average spending per transaction.
Our price stratification analysis indicated generally consistent results across most price strata except for substantially greater decline in the sales above $50,000. Comparable U.S. store sales dropped 34%, which were somewhat below our expectation and compared with a flat comp in last year’s first quarter.
In terms of the monthly trend, U.S. comps declined 34% in February, 39% in March, and 30% in April. Last year, U.S. comps were unchanged in February, up 4% in March, and down 3% in April, so the two-year run-rates do not indicate any meaningful change in trend.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
