Lululemon's Profit Plunges 60 Percent, CFO To Retire

Lululemon Athletica's reported quarterly results that edged past expectations on Thursday, but the Canadian yogawear retailer trimmed its revenue and earnings forecast for the fiscal year.

The company, which announced a $450 million share buyback program, also said its Chief Financial Officer John Currie would retire by the end of the fiscal year, ending February 2015.

Excluding a one-time adjustment for planned repatriation of foreign earnings, the company said its profit in the quarter was 34 cents a share. Analysts on average were expecting earnings of 32 cents a share according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

On a net basis, profit in the fiscal first quarter ended May 4, fell to $19 million, or 13 cents per share, down from $47.3 million, or 32 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose 11 percent to $384.6 million, the Vancouver-based company said.
The company said it now expects revenue for the year to be in the range of $1.77 billion to $1.80 billion, with adjusted earnings of between $1.71 per share and $1.76 per share. It had earlier forecast earnings of $1.80 to $1.90 per share on revenue of $1.77 billion to $1.82 billion.

Analysts are currently expecting earnings of $1.89 a share on revenue of $1.8 billion.

The company, which is still recovering from an embarrassing recall of see-through yoga pants last year, faced another set-back on Wednesday when its founder and biggest shareholder, Chip Wilson, lashed out at its board, saying the company's new chair and another director are too focused on short-term growth and that he had voted against them in board elections.