Boston, MA 09/12/2014 (wallstreetpr) – A beauty retailer, Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) Chief Executive Officer, Mary Dillon, said that the company expects to achieve 20% range in growth in both sales and earnings per share to reflect its continued market share gains. The company also attributed its strong financial results in the second quarter to the successful launches of new product and brand besides traffic improvement amidst rapidly growing e-commerce business.
Raises Full Year Guidance
Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) indicated that it was lifting its earnings per share uptick to a 20% range on total sales growth of 20% range to be fuelled by 7% – 8% comparable store sales growth for the full year, a statement issued by the company said. The beauty retailer plans to remodel 12 locations and extend its footage by about 15% through 100 new stores opening. It also intends to spend about $265 million towards capital expenditure in fiscal 2014. In June, Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) predicted earnings growth to be in the mid-teens.
For the third quarter, Ulta Salon expects to achieve earnings of 79 – 84 cents a share compared to 70 cents delivered in the year-ago quarter. Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) also predicts net sales of $724 – $736 million to be driven by 6% – 8% comparable store sales uptick versus $618.8 million delivered in the previous year quarter.
2Q Results
Ulta Salon said that its net income jumped 35.4% to $60.8 million from $44.9 million while earnings per share climbed 34.3% to 94 cents from 70 cents in the same quarter last year.
Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA)’s net sales grew 22.2% to $734.2 million from $601.0 million in the year-ago quarter. Its comparable store sales advanced 9.6% on top of an 8.4% growth achieved in fiscal 2013 second quarter. It attributed the strong performance to 5.8% uptick in transactions and 3.8% increase in average ticket. Its e-commerce comparable sales also witnessed 54.9% uptick thus accounting for 1.3 percentage points of the total comparable store sales growth.
While gross margin was flat with last year at 35.3%, operating margin improved to 13.3% from 12.1% in the previous year quarter. However, its selling, general and administrative costs dipped to 21.5% of net sales from 22.4%.
