For the second quarter, Burlington Stores beat Wall Street estimates based on strength across merchandising categories and sales regions.
Burlington posted a net income of $102.6 million, or $1.50 a diluted share, for the second quarter versus a loss of $46.8 million, or 71 cents per diluted share, for the period a year before. In the 2019 period, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, net income was $84.6 million, or $1.26 per diluted share.
Burlington beat a Yahoo Finance-published analyst average estimate for diluted earnings per share of $1.47 and topped revenue estimate of $2.1 billion as well.
Net sales were $2.21 billion versus $1 billion in the 2020 period and $1.66 billion in the 2019 period, Burlington reported. Total revenue was $2.22 billion versus $1.01 billion in the 2020 period and $1.66 billion in the 2019 period.
Compared to the 2019 second quarter, comparable sales increased 19%, Burlington noted.
In a conference call, Michael O’Sullivan, Burlington CEO, said, all merchandise categories and company regions outperformed plan in the quarter. He added that the company has continued rolling out stores, with 16 open in the spring.
Burlington operated 792 stores at the end of the second quarter.
In announcing the financial results, O’Sullivan said, “We are pleased with our second-quarter results, which showed continued strong momentum in sales growth and margin expansion. Once again, we demonstrated our improved ability to chase the trend through our Burlington 2.0 strategies. We are getting stronger as a business and as a team. The environment remains uncertain, and the trend is difficult to predict. We will continue to manage our business flexibly so we can chase the trend or pull back if necessary. In addition, we are seeing a huge imbalance between supply and demand in global logistics systems. This is driving up freight and supply chain expenses and it will put significant pressure on our margins for the balance of the year.”
In terms of the future, O’Sullivan struck an optimistic tone.
“Looking further out, we remain very excited by the market share opportunities ahead of us,” he said. “Our 34% total sales growth year-to-date reinforces our confidence in this opportunity. Meanwhile, we believe that many of the prevailing expense headwinds are being driven by short-term market conditions. We continue to expect significant margin expansion, as these conditions normalize, over the next few years.”
