Signet Jewelers Ltd., with corporate offices in Akron, on Thursday reported per-share profit that beat analysts’ expectations.
Signet, the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewelry with about 3,600 stores, said net income for the fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 30 was $271.9 million, or $3.42 per share, up from $228 million, or $2.84 a share, for the year-ago fourth quarter.
Adjusted earnings came in at $3.63 a share, beating analysts’ expectations.
Signet shares on the news, closing Thursday at $121.42, up $3.41, or 2.89 percent.
Sales for the fourth quarter were $2.39 billion, up from $2.28 billion for the year-ago quarter. Annual sales were $6.55 billion, up 14.2 percent from the prior year.
Same-store sales for fiscal 2016 grew 4.1 percent from the prior year. Same-store sales are those for stores open at least a year.
Mark Light, Chief Executive Officer of Signet Jewelers, said in a news release that the company “had an excellent finish to another strong year.”
Signet’s stores in the United States include Kay Jewelers, Jared The Galleria of Jewelry and Zales. Signet bought rival Zale Corp. in a deal valued at $1.46 billion in 2014.
Light said in the release that the “integration of Zale continues to go well ... We see an expanded and accelerated level of financial contribution from the deep pipeline of initiatives our teams are working on...”
Also Thursday, the company forecast first-quarter fiscal 2017 earnings of $1.90 to $1.95 a share. That is above analysts’ expectations of $1.93 a share.
Also Thursday, Signet said that for fiscal 2016 year, finance charge income — generated by the company’s in-house finance programs that customers use to buy jewelry — generated $252.5 million, while net bad debt was $190.5 million, “a favorable difference of $62.0 million.”
The company earlier addressed its in-house finance programs in a Feb. 29 preliminary earnings report, saying that the programs generated $63.9 million in interest income for the fourth quarter 2016, $3.9 million more than $60 million it lost in bad debt for the quarter.
Bloomberg News reported on the preliminary earnings report last month, saying the report was serving to alleviate investors’ concerns about Signet’s credit business.
Bloomberg noted that on Feb. 29, shares of the company’s stock rose 9.4 percent. The Bloomberg report said critics had said prior to the preliminary report that “Signet was becoming more of a finance company than a jewelry chain, increasing its risks in the process.”
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com.