Foot Locker’s first-quarter results miss Street forecasts; cuts earnings outlook

Shares of Foot Locker tumbled in early trading Friday on weak profit and revenue numbers. The shoe retailer also cut its outlook for the year.

Foot Locker now expects full-year earnings per share to be up by high-single digits, a more reserved outlook than the double digit increase it had forecast earlier. The company cited its $1.2 billion stock repurchase program announced in February.

Shares of Foot Locker tumbled 11% before the market opened Friday.

Wall Street may be particularly sensitive to any weakness from companies like Foot Locker in light of escalating trade tensions with China.

This week, Foot Locker and more than 170 shoe and retail companies, including Adidas and Nike, sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging him not to double down on new tariffs as the trade dispute with China drags on.

“The proposed additional tariff of 25% on footwear would be catastrophic for our consumers, our companies, and the American economy as a whole,” they wrote.

The group said that the industry’s trade association, the Footwear Distributors & Retailers of America, estimates the proposed tariff would add $7 billion in additional costs for footwear customers each year.

The weak showing from Foot Locker appeared to drag down others in the sector.

For the period ended May 4, Foot Locker earned $172 million, or $1.52 per share. Removing one-time costs, earnings were $1.53 per share, or 8 cents below the per-share earnings forecast by industry analysts, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research. The New York company earned $165 million, or $1.38 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue was $2.08 billion, also short of the $2.11 billion that Wall Street was looking for.

Comparable store sales, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, increased 4.6%. That too was well short of the 5.6% increase analysts expected.