For the quarter ended Jan. 28, the company earned $14.7 million, or 13 cents per share, down from $57.2 million, or 51 cents per share, for the same period a year ago. Without losses of 20 cents per share from discontinued operations, the company earned $37.7 million, or 33 cents per share. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 43 cents per share on sales of $1.43 billion.
"If you're focused on Q4, you're probably disappointed," said Big Lots chairman and CEO Steve Fishman during the company's earnings conference call. However, he added that the retailer had made a lot of progress during the fourth quarter to improve the company's future operations.
During the quarter, sales rose 6.1% percent to $1.39 billion from last year's $1.31 billion. Comparable store sales increased 2.5% for the quarter, impacted by a 5.1% increase in the value of the average basket and a 2.6% decrease in customer transactions. Home and furniture were the best performing merchandise categories.
"Our furniture business continues to trend well and posted double digit comps for the second quarter in a row," said Joe Cooper, senior vice president and CFO.
Big Lots anticipates fiscal 2006 earnings of 38 cents to 43 cents per diluted share compared to income from continuing operations of 14 cents per diluted share for fiscal 2005. The discount retailer is basing its guidance on comparable store sales increases in the 2% to 3% range with net sales from continuing operations increasing in the 3% to 4% range compared to fiscal 2005.
At the end of fiscal 2005, the retailer operated a total of 1,401 Big Lots stores in 47 states.
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