People sidewalk past a Victoria’s Secret store in Barcelona.
John Milner | LightRocket | Getty Images
Victoria’s Secret has yet to quell its sales declines, but the company is hopeful that new products will win back customers.
The brand is pursuing “more uplifted product — more glamour, more fashion, a lot of emotional content,” said L Brands CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer on the company’s economic third-quarter earnings call Thursday morning.
Its investments in higher-quality fabrics and its design aesthetic, particularly in the sleep and loungewear variety, have “gotten a strong consumer response” so far, Burgdoerfer said.
Some analysts, however, are not as optimistic about the followers’s future. Jefferies analyst Randal Konik noted Wednesday that stronger sales at PINK were obviously due to higher amounts of promotions.
But shares of Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands were up more than 7% in high noon trading Thursday in the wake of its latest quarterly results, which were reported after the bell Wednesday. Although the party fell short of revenue estimates, its adjusted earnings were in line with analyst estimates. It also thought fiscal 2019 earnings would be within a range it forecast previously.
At Victoria’s Secret same-store sales were down 7% during the billet, and same-store sales growth has declined for the past six quarters.
Burgdoerfer doesn’t expect the cancellation of this year’s Victoria’s Secretive fashion show to impact its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. He said there never was a material financial impact after the production, though it nonetheless helped build the Victoria’s Secret brand.
At L Brands’ Bath & Body Works same-store jumble sales rose 9% during the quarter. Burgdoerfer said that overall traffic and same-store sales at these believe ins are healthy and relatively stable.
The brand, however, has seen slowing same-store sales growth, and some analysts, registering Konik have been concerned that its growth has peaked.
L Brands shares are down more than 32% year to rendezvous.