An American department store giant, Kohl’s Corp. (KSS – Free Report) was founded in 1962, and offers customers exclusive brand apparel, shoes, accessories, and home and beauty products. Brands include Simply Vera Vera Wang, Sonoma, APT 9, Croft & Barrow, Jennifer Lopez, Food Network, as well as national names like Levi’s, Dockers, and Columbia.
Recently, Kohl’s has begun working with other industry giants. Its partnership with Amazon (AMZN – Free Report) , where it started selling the company’s smart home products and accepting the online retailer’s returns, ramped up earlier this year.
And, customers will soon be able to buy Aldi groceries at Kohl’s, as the retailer announced that it will be renting out some of its extra store space to a whole list of new partners.
Strong Holiday Quarter
Recently, the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock reported better-than-expected results for its fourth quarter.
Adjusted earnings of $1.87 flew past the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.77 and jumped nearly 30% from the prior-year quarter.
Thanks to solid sales and improved gross margin, revenues came in at $6.77 billion and grew 9.2% year-over-year. Gross margin expanded 43 basis points to 33.8%.
Comparable store sales rose 6.3% compared to a 2.2% decline reported in the year-ago quarter.
Back in the first quarter of 2014, Kohl’s implemented a strategic initiative called “Greatness Agenda” that was designed to drive transactions per store and sales. It seems to finally be yielding results, especially after this strong holiday quarter.
2018 Guidance
Based on a great fiscal 2017, Kohl’s management team expects comps growth in the range of flat to a rise of 2%, while revenue growth is anticipated in a band of negative 1% to positive 1% for 2018.
Gross margin is estimated to rise 10bps from last year, and earnings should fall in the range of $4.95 to $5.45 per share.
