The US retail group Foot Locker Inc. suffered a significant decline in sales in the 2023/24 financial year. Negative special effects also ensured that the sporting goods supplier slipped deep into the loss zone. This emerges from current results that the company published on Thursday.
In the most recent financial year, which ended on February 3rd, group sales amounted to 8.17 billion US dollars (7.51 billion euros). This means that it shrank by 6.7 percent compared to the previous year.
Although the group was able to reduce its operating costs, operating profit slipped by 75.6 percent to $142 million. The bottom line was that due to high one-off charges, which resulted primarily from write-downs on minority investments, there was a net loss attributable to shareholders of US$330 million (€303 million), after the company had recorded a surplus of US$342 million in the previous financial year -dollars had achieved. Adjusted for special items, net profit fell by 71.7 percent to $134 million.
For the current 2024/25 financial year, management forecast sales development in the range of -1.0 to +1.0 percent. Diluted earnings per share adjusted for special items, which were $1.42 last year, are expected to increase to $1.50 to $1.70. The goals were not particularly well received by investors: Foot Locker’s share price fell by more than 14 percent immediately after publication.