News Bureau

January 19, 2019

Signet holiday season performance fell

Signet Jewelers Limited, the world's largest retailer of diamond jewelry, today announced its sales for the 9 weeks ended January 5, 2019 (Holiday Season).

According to the summary of Holiday Season, its’ Same Store Sales down 1.3%. Revises fourth quarter guidance to same store sales down 1.6% - down 2.5%, GAAP EPS of $2.32 - $2.53 and non-GAAP EPS of $3.77 - $3.92. GAAP EPS guidance now includes a $0.19 charge related to resolution of a previously disclosed regulatory matter which is excluded from non-GAAP EPS guidance.

Revises Fiscal 2019 guidance to same store sales approximately flat, GAAP EPS of ($8.16) - ($7.93) and non-GAAP EPS of $3.53 - $3.69. GAAP EPS guidance now includes a $0.20 charge related to resolution of a previously disclosed regulatory matter which is excluded from non-GAAP EPS guidance!

Virginia C. Drosos, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Our holiday season performance fell short of our expectations. Early improvements in refreshed merchandise assortment, digital marketing and OmniChannel were more than offset by larger than expected declines in legacy product lines.

In addition, the competitive promotional environment we saw early in the season intensified in December and, despite our increased promotional investments, we experienced reduced traffic during key December gifting weeks. Combined with higher than expected credit costs, these factors negatively impacted our profitability."

Drosos continued, “These holiday results reinforce the need to take even faster action to improve our financial and operational performance. We will move decisively to improve profitability through aggressively optimizing our cost structure and continuing to right-size our store base, as well as more effectively managing our inventory.

As we enter the second year of our Path to Brilliance transformation, we expect to accelerate initiatives to enhance our product assortment, marketing personalization and analytics, promotional effectiveness, service offerings, and e-commerce to deliver a more seamless and engaging OmniChannel customer experience. We will provide an update on our plans for FY2020 when we report our fourth quarter earnings in March.”

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