West Marine Inc. lowered its sales guidance for the year and also slightly lowered expectations around earnings due to weakness in sales to professional customers.
The company now expects GAAP pre-tax profits to be in the range of $9.0 million to $11.0 million. Full year net revenue is now expected to be flat to down slightly compared with last year with same store sales in the range of flat to up 1 percent.
Previously, West Marine’s full-year 2016 guidance called for total revenue growth in the 1 percent to 4 percent range and pre-tax profit growth of 50 percent over 2015 full-year results. With pre-tax profits of $7.3 million last year, pre-tax earnings were projected to reach $10.9 million.
Matt Hyde, CEO of West Marine, commented, “We continue to make solid progress executing our long-term growth strategies which include increasing the size of our e-commerce channel, expanding our non-core merchandising offerings, and optimizing our store fleet. In contrast to the growth in sales to our retail customers, volume to our professional customers has declined as we continue to strive for greater profitability. Based on current trends, we think it is prudent to adopt a slightly more conservative outlook for the remainder of the year.”
