Avon Posts Loss as Sales Fall for 17th Straight Quarter -- Update
12 February 2016 - 4:48AM
Dow Jones News
By Paul Ziobro and Anne Steele
Avon Products Inc. shares plunged Thursday as losses continued
to pile up at the struggling beauty company, where quarterly sales
fell for the 17th consecutive period.
The latest results raise pressure on Chief Executive Sheri McCoy
to execute on her latest turnaround plan. The company is in the
midst of spinning off its flagging North American business through
a complex transaction with private-equity firm Cerberus Capital
Management LP and fixing parts of its business around the globe,
where it is struggling with the effects of the stronger dollar and
years of stumbles in key markets like Brazil.
The latest results fell short of analyst expectations, pushing
shares down 17% to $2.71 in midday Thursday trading. Avon shares
have now fallen more than 30% in 2016 and by more than two-thirds
over the last year.
One of the main solutions to Avon's struggles is the deal with
Cerberus announced last month, where the firm would inject $435
million into Avon and carve out the North American business into a
separate company with another $170 million investment. That
transaction is set to close in the next couple of months. Avon
ended the year with $687 million in cash, down about 25% from where
it started 2015.
Beyond that, Avon hopes to increase the number of sales
representatives it has globally and focus on its most promising
markets like Brazil and Russia. It is planning to pay for
investments in its business with $350 million in costs cuts,
including $70 million expected this year.
Avon must try to execute that through a volatile currency
environment that has continued to pose challenges to the global
company. In Brazil and Russia, Avon is raising prices to keep up
with inflation, but it isn't enough to keep profit margins from
their downward spiral.
"We have taken significant pricing and we'll continue to do that
moving forward," Ms. McCoy said on Thursday's earnings call.
For the fourth quarter, Avon reported a loss of $333.4 million,
or 76 cents a share, compared with a loss of $330.7 million, or 75
cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue dropped 20% to $1.61
billion. The company said revenue would have been up 3% in constant
currency and excluding the sale of its Liz Earle business.
On an adjusted, continuing-operations basis, which levels out
the bottom line for the divestiture of the North American business
and other items, Avon broke even, compared with a profit of 21
cents in the fourth quarter of 2014. Analysts polled by Thomson
Reuters had forecast adjusted earnings of 8 cents a share on $1.82
billion in revenue.
The number of representatives actively selling products rose 2%
in the recent quarter from a year earlier, as increases in Europe,
the Middle East and Africa were partially offset by declines in the
Latin America markets experiencing high inflation.
Avon didn't provide detailed guidance for the coming year but
did project that profit would suffer more in the first half due to
ongoing foreign-exchange pressure. The cost savings also aren't
expected to materialize until the second half of the year.
Write to Paul Ziobro at Paul.Ziobro@wsj.com and Anne Steele at
Anne.Steele@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 11, 2016 12:33 ET (17:33 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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