Tiffany & Co. (TIF.N) was one of the few bright spots on the S&P 500 Friday.
The jewelry maker rose as much as 3.8 per cent after forecasting slight growth for the year ahead. That was enough to reverse an earlier loss of as much as 2.8 per cent and trigger a rally that’s among the biggest on the benchmark index.
One of the company’s most closely watched retail gauges -- same-store sales -- came in flat, slightly below the Street’s average estimate for a 0.1 per cent gain, the firm said during its fourth-quarter earnings release. But on the bright side, Tiffany expects single-digit growth in earnings per share and sales this year. Fourth-quarter per-share earnings came in at US$1.67, beating the US$1.60 average estimate.
“We expect a rebound to double-digit EPS growth on midsingle digit revenue growth over the long term,” Laura Champine, an analyst at Loop Capital Markets LLC, said in a note to clients as she raised the stock’s target price to US$105 from US$100. “Though Tiffany’s sales are under pressure in early 2019 on macroeconomic pressures, we expect an improving pace of growth as we move through the year.”
There weren’t too many surprises, as the company had already announced in January that its holiday-period performance was short of the jeweler’s own expectations. Tiffany is up 6.6 per cent this week, the biggest gain since November. That compares with the S&P 500’s 0.7 per cent drop over the last five days.
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