Tiffany beats Street with Q1 profit, revenue

New York – Tiffany & Co. overcame the negative impact of a strong dollar on global performance to beat Wall Street with smaller-than-expected declines in net earnings and sales during the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Net earnings declined 17% to $105 million from $126 million a year earlier, with increased marketing spending contributing to the decrease.



Worldwide net sales dropped 5% to $962 million, from $1.01 billion. Worldwide same-store sales dropped 1%. Tiffany plans to open an unspecified number of new stores in key markets during fiscal 2015.



In the Americas, total sales rose 1% to $444 million and same-store sales climbed 1%. This reflected higher sales to U.S. customers offset by lower foreign tourist spending in the U.S., as well as healthy sales growth in Canada and Latin America.



“We started the year facing well-known challenges from both global economic uncertainties and the effect of a strong U.S. dollar on the translation of foreign-denominated sales into dollars and on foreign tourist spending in the U.S., as well as a difficult sales comparison in Japan,” said Frederic Cumenal, CEO. “Despite those factors, our first quarter results for net sales, as well as for gross margin and net earnings, were somewhat better than we anticipated.”



Looking ahead to fiscal 2015, Tiffany is maintaining guidance of net earnings in the second quarter declining at a more moderate rate than in the first quarter, followed by expected double-digit percentage net earnings growth in the second half of the year.