Written by StockNews.com

Coach Inc. (COH ) early Tuesday posted mixed fiscal third quarter earnings results and backed its full-year forecast.

The New York City-based luxury handbag and apparel maker reported fiscal Q3:

• earnings per share (EPS) of $0.46, which was $0.02 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $0.44 [and]
• revenues fell 3.7% from last year to $995.2 million, however, missing analysts’ view for $1.02 billion.

Looking ahead, Coach:

• reaffirmed its full-year outlook for fiscal 2017 revenues to rise in the low-single digits, in-line with Wall Street’s view for +1% growth...[and
• also continues to expect double-digit growth in both net income and EPS, which could beat analysts’ estimate of +8% EPS growth.

The company commented via press release:

“Our solid performance this quarter was very much in line with our expectations and our strategic initiatives.

In a volatile and complex global environment, we delivered continued positive comparable store sales for the Coach brand in North America and gross margin expansion in each segment, while tightly controlling costs.

We continued to drive growth in our directly-operated Europe and Mainland China businesses, which represent the most significant geographic opportunities for our brands...

Despite our deliberate pullback in the North America wholesale channel and the impact of calendar shifts, we delivered earnings growth.

Importantly, we announced a new leadership structure and strengthened our Coach brand team, a critical step in Coach, Inc.’s evolution as a customer-focused, multi-brand organization.”

...Year-to-date, COH has gained 11.62%, versus a 7.24% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

COH currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of B (Buy) and is ranked #13 of 69 stocks in the Fashion & Luxury category.