Sport Supply Group ended the year with a bang as net sales grew in the mid-singles while net income more than doubled. A focus on cutting costs in its catalog business helped to keep overall SG&A in line, while margins expanded through the companys ongoing integration and growth planning.
For the fourth quarter ended June 30, 2008, net sales increased 9.0% to $61.1 million from $56.1 million last year. Gross margins increased 180 basis points to 36.2% of net sales while expenses declined 330 basis points to 29.5% of sales. That combination allowed the company to switch from a net loss of $302,000, or 3 cents per diluted share, last year to a net income of $1.8 million, or 15 cents per diluted share for this years quarter.
Adam Blumenfeld, chairman and CEO, commented, “We are particularly proud of the companys ability to grow annual sales organically by 6.1%-to more than a quarter of a billion dollars-during a year where we cut 25% of our paper catalog circulation and eliminated approximately 1,000 SKUs from the catalogs.”
In addition, Blumenfeld said the company plans to continue expanding its road sales footprint, noting the effort “is in tandem with key vendors and brands really starting to understand the power and the reach of our model.”
The company is looking towards an expansion into the elementary sales category. Said Blumenfield, “We expect strong double-digit growth for the category again in 09 and it’s all about fighting the obesity epidemic, which is very real and very present in the K-12 markets and that fight starts with the K-6 market. So a lot of new product introduction into this space, performance, agility style product that goes along with some of the Nike SPARQ Training that you may have seen advertising for.”
