Investing.com -- Ascena Retail Group Inc (NASDAQ:ASNA), the parent company of Ann Taylor, plunged more than 5% in after-hours trading after the specialty retailer missed analysts' forecasts and lowered its full-year outlook on Tuesday.
During Ascena's third quarter of Fiscal Year 2016, the Mahwah, New Jersey-based retail company reported earnings of $15 million or 0.08 per share, down considerably from net profits of $24 million or 0.15 per share during the same quarter from the same period in 2015. Last August, Ascena acquired Ann Taylor and Loft Brands in a $2.16 billion purchase that brought the two popular fashion names under the same umbrella as Lane Bryant. While revenues rose 45% to $1.67 billion for the quarter due to the additions of Ann Taylor and Loft Brands, the company still slightly missed analysts' targets on the three-month period. Analysts expected to see sales of $1.73 billion on earnings per share of 0.13.
Ascena CEO David Jaffe blamed poor weather patterns over the last several weeks for keeping shoppers at home.
"We continued to make progress in the third quarter with key catalysts in our business," Jaffe said in a statement. "At the same time, the environment this Spring has been challenging. After the disruption of a warm holiday season, we’ve had to contend with an unseasonably cold spring and resulting elevated traffic headwinds."
"While I think we have managed the business well, particularly with respect to inventory levels, we were not able to fully mitigate these challenges. Our earnings exceeded the upper end of our guidance range for the third quarter, but I’ll note that performance benefited from some favorable expense timing that offset softer than expected top-line performance."
For the year as a whole, Ascena expects earnings per share between 0.67 and 0.70 on revenue of $7.1 billion. Previously, analysts offered full-year guidance of 0.75 per share on sales of $7.21 billion.
Shares in Ascena fell 0.37 or 5.12% to 6.85 in after-hours trading.