Shares of top athleisure-wear purveyor lululemon athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) closed 15% higher Thursday in the wake of the company’s latest earnings report, released after the close Wednesday.
For its fiscal third quarter, Lululemon posted revenue of just over $544.4 million, 13% higher on a year-over-year basis. This was on the back of comparable-store sales growth of 4%, and direct-to-consumer net sales that increased by 16%. Net profit saw a sharper rise, by 28% to almost $68.3 million ($0.50 per diluted share).
Those results topped analysts’ expectations, which on average were for a top line of $540 million, same-store sales growth of 2.7%, and net profit of $0.43 per share.
In the press release unveiling the figures, CEO Laurent Potdevin said that they “demonstrated strong execution across all areas of our business as we delivered continued [top line] momentum, outperformed in gross margin and inflected meaningfully in EPS.”
Buoyed by the good quarter, plus optimistic expectations for the holiday period, Lululemon lifted its EPS guidance for fiscal 2016. The company now believes this will be in the $2.11 to $2.16 range for the year, up from the previous estimate of $2.07 to $2.15. On the other hand, it slightly trimmed its revenue guidance — it’s now modeling a top line in the $2.32 billion to $2.34 billion range, down a touch from the former prognostication of $2.33 billion to $2.35 billion.
Additionally, Lululemon announced that its board of directors has approved a stock repurchase program for up to $100 million. The company did not give a termination date for the initiative.
During the quarter, the company added 10 stores in total to its lineup, giving it a total of 389.
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