Foot Locker, Inc. reported sales for the 13-week period ended May 3, 2003 of $1.13 billion, versus $1.09 billion in the comparable period last year, an increase of 3.5%. For this same 13-week period, comparable-store sales decreased 2.5%. Excluding the effect of foreign currency fluctuations, sales for the 13-week period increased 0.1%.
“While first quarter sales in our United States stores were somewhat disappointing, we are encouraged by our gross margin rate improvement,” stated Matthew D. Serra, Foot Locker, Inc.’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “We also continued to benefit from strong sales in our international Foot Locker stores and our rapidly growing Internet business. Therefore, we currently expect our first quarter 2003 earnings to be within the $0.26-to- $0.28 per share range of current analysts estimates.”
