Macy’s stock was taking a beating on Thursday after updating its guidance for the full year of 2018.
The update to Macy’s (NYSE:M) guidance for 2018 includes it lowering its earnings per share estimate for the period. The company now expects earnings per share for the year to range from $3.95 to $4.00. It’s previous outlook was for earnings per share between $4.10 to $4.30.
It isn’t just the lowering of its earnings per share outlook that is bad news for Macy’s stock. It also has to do with just how low that new guidance is. The range of $3.95 to $4.00 for 2018 is well below Wall Street’s earnings per share estimate of $4.23 for the year.
The guidance update hurting Macy’s stock today also includes the company now expecting comparable store sales for the year increasing by 2%. The previous outlook from the company was for comparable store sales increasing by 2.3% to 2.5%.
Also among the guidance update from Macy’s is a change to expectations for its net sales in 2018. The company is no longer expecting net sales for the year to be up between 0.3% and 0.7%. Instead, it now expects net sales for 2018 to be roughly flat from the previous year.
Macy’s gross margin rate was another part of its outlook that changed for the worst. M was originally expecting this to be up slightly during 2018. However, it now says that it is expecting it to be down slightly for the year.
M stock was down 18% as of noon Thursday.
As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
