Burlington Shares Tumble After Company Reports Q4 Foot Traffic Drop

Burlington Stores’ stock price saw a double-digit, pre-market dip Thursday (March 3) triggered by the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report and the announcement that the clothing retailer had seen a decline in foot traffic to its brick-and-mortar stores for the three-month period.

Overall, Burlington Stores saw a 28% increase in Q4 net sales in fiscal 2021, ending Jan. 29, from fiscal 2019 and 18% growth in total sales from two years ago. The company reported net income for fiscal 2021 of $409 million and a 15% comparable sales spike in the year compared to 2020 and a 6% jump from Q4 2019 to Q4 2021.

But while many of the numbers showed upward momentum for Burlington Stores, that wasn’t enough to get past the drop in foot traffic during the period, said CEO Michael O’Sullivan in a statement.

“We demonstrated a remarkable ability to chase sales and respond to consumer trends, and we made huge progress on our Burlington 2.0 strategic objectives,” he said in the statement. “Ordinarily we would be happy with 6% comp growth in Q4, but compared to the rest of 2021, this was a slowdown in our trend. This slowdown was partially driven by lower traffic to our stores due to a number of external factors and partially driven by the late delivery of some critical receipts in December. There are specific actions that we have identified and that we can take to better manage these receipt issues going forward.”

He called 2022’s retail spending outlook “extremely unpredictable especially as we lap government stimulus programs, and as general price inflation begins to bite.”

“This kind of unpredictability has, in the past, tended to favor off-price,” he said in the statement. “In 2022 we will plan our business conservatively but then be ready to chase and take advantage of opportunities.”

In other low-price fashion news, Walmart has launched Choose My Model, a virtual tool powered by computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) on the company’s website and app that allows shoppers to pick a person who resembles their height, shape and skin tone to show how clothes would fit.

Read more: Walmart’s Choose My Model Helps Shoppers Try on Clothes Virtually