Nordstrom shares slip further after it misses on key retail metric

After a day-long retail bloodbath on Wall Street, US department-store chain Nordstrom saw its shares slip further in after-hours trading on Thursday after reporting that comparable sales — a key industry metric — fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.

The company said that comparable sales were down 0.8 per cent versus a year earlier, compared to expectations for that figure to remain flat during the three-month period ending April 29. It’s the fourth department store today to miss comparable-sale estimates, which dragged on retail shares all day.

Despite that miss, Nordstrom managed to eke out a beat on other earnings figures, reporting total revenue of $3.35bn, versus the $3.33bn expected by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Earnings per diluted share were 37 cents on net earnings of $63m, beating the 27 cent-per-share estimate by a full dime.

The company’s discount Nordstrom Rack line of stores remains a bright spot, however, with net sales increasing 8.7 per cent and comparable sales up 2.3 per cent for the quarter, compared to a 1.7 per cent decline in net sales and 2.8 fall in comp sales at its namesake department-store chain.

Nordstrom also reiterated its earlier guidance for comparable sales to remain flat throughout 2017.

Amid the earlier retail carnage, Nordstrom shares fell 7.6 per cent ahead of the earnings announcement, along with shares of rival US department store chains. Shares fell as much as 6 per cent after the announcement, although that had been trimmed to a 2.6 per cent decline at pixel time.