At Home (HOME) Opens Three New Stores, Expands Footprint

In order to fortify store expansion spree, At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME) opened three new stores in February 2019, boosting its presence in the Midwest region. These stores are located at 101 Randall Rd. in Lake in the Hills, IL; 3015 W. 86th St., Indianapolis, IN; and 7050 Watts Rd., Madison, WI. The Madison-based store is the first one in the Wisconsin market.

As of Feb 28, 2019, the company’s store count was 183, including the recent ones. The company, which is based on a warehouse model, hires nearly 25 new team members for each of its new store.

Store Expansion Strategy on Track

The company remains on track to realize its real estate strategy of 600-plus store potential. New store expansion is one of the key long-term growth strategies of the company. Notably, net sales in the first nine months of 2018 grew 23.6% year over year to $811.8 million, of which new stores contributed nearly $138.1 million.

At Home is optimistic about delivering solid results in fiscal 2020.The company expects fiscal 2020 mix to be similar to fiscal 2019, with approximately 80% second-generation locations and 20% new store builds.

It has plans to open seven new superstores and expects net sales within $347-$352 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, which is slated to be announced on Mar 27. The company expects comps growth between 1% and 2% or 6.2% and 7.2% on a two-year basis during the same period.

At Home is expected to generate more revenues, going forward, owing to continuous superstore expansion, based on disciplined site selection, growing brand awareness and team member execution. The company is well positioned for the upcoming quarters as well, as it has already pipelined a substantial portion of superstore for fiscal 2020.



Notably, shares of At Home have gained 24.7%, outperforming its industry’s rally of 19.5% in the past three months, backed by solid earnings surprise history. The company’s earnings have surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing six quarters.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

At Home currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the Retail-Wholesale sector are RH (NYSE:RH) , Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE:WSM) and Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE:HVT) . While RH sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Williams-Sonoma and Haverty carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

RH, Williams-Sonoma and Haverty’s earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, with average positive surprise of 23.5%, 9.6%, and 19.3%, respectively.

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At Home Group Inc. (HOME): Free Stock Analysis Report

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