Here's How Burlington Stores (BURL) Looks Going Into 2020

In an era of ever-evolving retail landscape, Burlington Stores, Inc. (NYSE:BURL) has made multiple changes to its business model to adapt and stay relevant. Notably, this New Jersey-based company looks well poised to enter 2020, given its sound fundamentals and growth efforts. Factors such as steady wage gains, solid labor market and improving consumer sentiment have been also favoring this retailer of branded apparel products.

This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock has soared 38% so far in the year, outperforming the S&P 500’s rally of 25.2%. Additionally, the stock’s long-term earnings growth rate of 15.7% and a VGM Score of A reflect its inherent strength. Moreover, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2020 top and bottom line indicates year-over-year improvement of 8.5% and 11.3%, respectively.

Strategic Endeavors

The company has steadily increased vendor counts, made technological advancements, initiated better marketing approach and focused on localized assortments. All these endeavors have helped the company to post decent comparable sales, and in turn fuel top-line performance.

We note that comparable store sales rose 2.7% during third-quarter fiscal 2019 compared with increase of 4.4% in the year-ago period and 3.8% in the preceding quarter. This was the 27th successive quarter of comparable store sales growth.



Burlington Stores, which started business as a coat-focused off-price retailer, is focusing on “open to buy” off-price model. The current model is helping customers to get nationally branded, fashionable, high quality and rightly priced products.

The company is now focusing on underpenetrated categories, particularly home, beauty and gifts, in order to make business less weather sensitive. In fact, the company is reaping the benefits of its multichannel engagement strategy, which is evident from its favorable results. Moreover, it is gradually expanding its store fleet. The company intends to improve operating margin and lower the gap of the same compared to peers by augmenting sales, optimizing markdowns and effectively managing inventory.

Clearly, you can see from above that there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the stock going into 2020.

3 Hot Picks

Target (NYSE:TGT) has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 8.6%, on average. It sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Dillard's (NYSE:DDS) has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 7.7%, on average. It carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) , which carries a Zacks Rank #2, has a long-term earnings growth rate of 8.7%.

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