Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF)
Q4 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
February 16, 2010 8:30 a.m. ET

Executives

Eric Cerny - Manager Investor Relations
Michael S. Jeffries - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Jonathan E. Ramsden - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Brian P. Logan - Vice President, Finance and Controller

Analysts

Barbara Wyckoff - Jesup & Lamont Securities Corporation
Jeffrey Klinefelter - Piper Jaffray
Christine Chen - Needham & Company
Jeffrey Black - Barclays Capital
Michelle Tan - Goldman Sachs
Lizabeth Dunn - Thomas Weisel Partners
Kush Barry - Jefferies & Company
Paul Lejuez - Credit Suisse
Janet Kloppenburg - JJK Research
Robert Samuels - Oppenheimer & Company
Dorothy Lakner - Caris & Company
Roxanne Meyer - UBS
Adrienne Tennant - Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., Inc.
Stacy Patt - Analyst
Lorraine Hutchinson - Banc of America/Merrill Lynch
Howard Tubin - RBC Capital Markets
Edward Yruma - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Dana Telsey - Telsey Advisory Group
Jennifer Black - Jennifer Black & Associates
Laura Champine - Cowen and Company

Presentation

Operator

Good morning. And welcome to this Abercrombie & Fitch Fourth Quarter Earnings Results Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. All lines are in a listen only mode. If you have any questions during the call you may signal us by pressing star one on your touchtone telephone. We’ll open the call to take your questions at the end of the presentation. We also ask that you limit yourself to one question during the question-and-answer session.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Eric Cerny. Please go ahead sir.

Eric Cerny

Good morning. And welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. Earlier this morning we released fourth quarter sales and earnings, balance sheet, income statement and an updated financial history. Please feel free to reference these materials available on our website. This call is being recorded and the replay may be accessed through the internet at Abercrombie.com under the Investor Relations section.

Before we begin, I remind you that any forward-looking statements we may make today are subject to the safe harbor statement found in our SEC filings. Today’s earnings call will be limited to one hour.

We will begin with a few brief remarks from Mike, followed by a review of financial performance for the quarter from Jonathan Ramsden and Brian Logan. After our prepared comments we will be available to take your questions as long as time permits. Please limit yourself to one question so that we can speak with as many callers as possible.

As stated in our earnings release today, our fourth quarter and annual results for the current and prior periods now reflect the reclassification of Ruehl into discontinued operations. The guidance we gave on our third quarter earnings call was prior to reflecting discontinued operations accounting for Ruehl and where significant we have indicated the effects of this in our commentary on the quarter.

Now to Mike.

Michael S. Jeffries

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We’ve been through a difficult year. But we firmly believe it was a year in which we laid the foundations for future success. As we look back to a year ago, when we spoke to you regarding our objectives for 2009, we laid out that we were committed to protecting the brands, improving our product assortment and not sacrificing quality.

We said we would preserve cash, seek expense saving opportunities and efficiencies in the business and continue to invest in our international expansion. All of which we believe we have done in a very difficult environment.

We continue to be very encouraged by our international rollout and Jonathan will provide more color on our 2010 plans in a moment. Today I feel more positive about our domestic business than I have for a long time. Why?

First, because I feel good about our male business and I think that we are on the right track with the female business. Our male business has a clear identity is performing well and has outpaced the women’s business over the last year or so.