Burlington Stores, Inc. a nationally recognized off-price retailer of high-quality, branded apparel, footwear, accessories, and merchandise for the home at everyday low prices, today announced its results for the second quarter ended August 1, 2020.
Michael O’Sullivan, CEO, stated, “The second quarter had some highs and some lows. The pace of our re-opening sales significantly exceeded our expectations, and we turned our aged spring merchandise very rapidly. This enabled us to go back into the market and take advantage of great merchandise availability. But we were not able to get these fresh receipts to our stores as quickly as we needed them; our in-store inventories declined and our sales trend fell off dramatically in the back half of June. As we have re-built our store inventory levels over the last several weeks, we have seen significant improvement in our sales trend.”
Mr. O’Sullivan continued, “We expect our trend to strengthen as we continue to replenish our store inventory levels but we see a lot of risk in Q3. In this uncertain environment, we plan to manage our business conservatively. We have plenty of liquidity and we will use this to support opportunistic buys of fall merchandise and of pack and hold inventory that we will flow to stores next year.”
Fiscal 2020 Second Quarter Operating Results (for the 13 week period ended August 1, 2020 compared with the 13 week period ended August 3, 2019)
First Six Months Fiscal 2020 Results
Inventory
Liquidity
Share Repurchase Activity
Sales in Re-Opened Stores
Due to the temporary closing of all its stores as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Company’s definition of comparable store sales is not meaningful this quarter. In order to provide a performance indicator for its stores as they reopen, the Company is temporarily reporting a new sales measure: Sales in Re-Opened Stores. Sales in Re-Opened Stores includes all stores that were opened prior to the end of the second quarter of Fiscal 2019, and reports the sales increase or decrease of these stores for the days the stores were open in the current period against sales for the same days in the prior year.
Outlook
Given the uncertainty surrounding the pace of the recovery of consumer demand, the Company’s sales and earnings guidance for Fiscal 2020 (the 52-weeks ending January 30, 2021) remains suspended at this time.
The following Fiscal 2020 guidance items have been re-issued or updated:
Publication of the Company’s 2019 Corporate Social Responsibility Report
The Company has released its second annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report, which highlights the Company’s CSR efforts and focuses on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues of greatest importance to the Company’s stakeholders. Principally covering the Company’s Fiscal Year 2019, which ended on February 1, 2020, the report discloses the Company’s overall performance on a range of ESG issues and initiatives pertaining to Burlington’s associates, environmental impacts, supply chain, and governance and ethics, as well as the communities in which Burlington operates. The report was informed by several reporting frameworks, including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), as well as feedback from stakeholders to better understand which issues to prioritize and disclose. Burlington’s 2019 CSR report can be found at www.burlingtoninvestors.com/corporate-social-responsibility.
Note Regarding Non-GAAP Financial Measures
The foregoing discussion of the Company’s operating results includes references to Adjusted SG&A, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income, Adjusted Earnings per Share (or Adjusted EPS), Adjusted EBIT (or Operating Margin), and Adjusted Effective Tax Rate. The Company believes these supplemental measures are useful in evaluating the performance of our business and provide greater transparency into our results of operations. In particular, we believe that excluding certain items that may vary substantially in frequency and magnitude from what we consider to be our core operating results are useful supplemental measures that assist in evaluating our ability to generate earnings and leverage sales, and to more readily compare core operating results between past and future periods. These non-GAAP financial measures are defined and reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measure later in this document.
Second Quarter 2020 Conference Call
The Company will hold a conference call on August 27, 2020 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss the Company’s second quarter results. The U.S. toll-free dial-in for the conference call is 1-866-437-5084 and the international dial-in number is 1-409-220-9374.
A live webcast of the conference call will also be available on the investor relations page of the Company’s website at www.burlingtoninvestors.com. For those unable to participate in the conference call, a replay will be available beginning after the conclusion of the call on August 27, 2020 through September 3, 2020. The U.S. toll-free replay dial-in number is 1-855-859-2056 and the international replay dial-in number is 1-404-537-3406. The replay passcode is 5977285. Additionally, a replay of the call will be available on the investor relations page of the Company’s website at www.burlingtoninvestors.com.
About Burlington Stores, Inc.
Burlington Stores, Inc., headquartered in New Jersey, is a nationally recognized off-price retailer with Fiscal 2019 net sales of $7.3 billion. The Company is a Fortune 500 company and its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “BURL.” The Company operated 739 stores (which included 11 temporarily closed stores) as of the end of the second quarter of Fiscal 2020, in 45 states and Puerto Rico, principally under the name Burlington Stores. The Company’s stores offer an extensive selection of in-season, fashion-focused merchandise at up to 60% off other retailers’ prices, including women’s ready-to-wear apparel, menswear, youth apparel, baby, beauty, footwear, accessories, home, toys, gifts and coats.
For more information about the Company, visit www.burlington.com.
Investor Relations Contacts:
David J. Glick
855-973-8445
Info@BurlingtonInvestors.com
Allison Malkin
Caitlin Morahan
ICR, Inc.
203-682-8225