Gander Revises Estimates

MINNEAPOLIS-Gander Mountain Co., a retailer specializing in outdoors equipment and clothing, revised its outlook for pretax income for fiscal 2004 downward to a range of $8 million to $13 million, compared with the company’s prior estimates of $16 million to $21 million. Gander Mountain’s reported pretax income in fiscal 2003 was $1.5 million.

The company also expects its comparable store sales comparison for the year to be slightly negative, versus a previous estimate of a 3% to 5% gain. Last year’s comparable store sales increase was 11.5%. Total revenue for the 2004 fiscal year is now expected to be in the range of $640 million to $670 million, compared with $490 million in the prior year. Moreover, the outdoors retails says that it expects total revenue in the third quarter to increase 24% over the previous year to approximately $178 million, reflecting the addition of new stores, while comparable store sales to decline 7.5%, compared with an increase of 12.5% in the third quarter of the previous year.

In revising its outlook, the company cited the impact of unseasonably warm weather on sales of outerwear and footwear. In addition, co-branded credit card promotions in 2004 weren’t as effective in spurring the sale of high-ticket items as the 2003 promotions were, when the credit card program was introduced.