Michael Kors To Close 125 Stores

Michael Kors (KORS ) is a global accessories, footwear, and apparel company. They offer two primary collections: the Michael Kors luxury collection and the MICHAEL Michael Kors accessible luxury collection. They also offer select footwear and outerwear through their KORS Michael Kors accessible luxury collection. They operate their business in three segments-retail, wholesale and licensing and have a global distribution network focused on company-operated retail stores, leading department stores, specialty stores, and select licensing partners.

It's getting to be a standard story of late, retailers in trouble. While we have seen some bucking of this trend recently--hello Best Buy, it's been an almost constant drumbeat of bad news for retailers who do not focus their efforts online or who do not offer discounts and sales to attract shoppers.

Today's latest round of bad news focuses on luxury goods maker Michael Kors. The company has announced plans to close 100 to 125 stores in an effort to restore profitability and "right size" its brick and mortar outlets.

Notable here is the fact that this is a luxury goods manufacturer whose brand may have lost some cache-- or at least the cache necessary to sustain its full-price retail stores. Customers want discounts these days, and those willing to pay full retail for goods is falling day-by-day. Outlets aren't affected here, and we don't know how many of the brand's @800 locations charge full price.

Of course, part of the plans include raising prices, reducing sales, and rehabbing older locations, so it may be difficult to attain the stated goals

The shares have been beaten up as the bad news has accumulated, and the company now projects annual sales below the lowest analyst estimates. Last quarter, the company also posted a loss and significantly underperformed the same period year-over-year.

Below is today's data on Michael Kors (KORS ):

VALUENGINE RECOMMENDATION: ValuEngine continues its HOLD recommendation on MICHAEL KORS for 2017-05-30. Based on the information we have gathered and our resulting research, we feel that MICHAEL KORS has the probability to ROUGHLY MATCH average market performance for the next year. The company exhibits ATTRACTIVE P/E Ratio but UNATTRACTIVE Earnings Growth Rate.