B. Riley Securities analyst Susan Anderson raised the firm's price target on Children's Place to $74 from $54 and keeps a Neutral rating on the shares post the Q4 results. The analyst wants to see additional clarity on the impact of store closures on revenue and margins, improvement on e-commerce fulfillment cost and efficiency, and trends for back-to-school 2021 before becoming more positive on the shares.
UBS analyst Jay Sole raised the firm's price target on Children's Place to $86 from $77 but keeps a Neutral rating on the shares. The analyst is "lacking conviction" that the company can capture market share in Q3 during the back-to-school season in the post-COVID retail environment when stores are unencumbered by regulations, but if it can, he sees the current consensus expectations for FY21 earnings as "much too low".
As of January 30, 2021, the Company had 680 of 749 stores open to the public in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, with all but one store of the temporarily closed stores located in Canada. Consistent with the Company's store fleet optimization initiative, the Company permanently closed 60 stores in the three months ended January 30, 2021, bringing our store closures for fiscal 2020 to 178 stores. The Company is planning to close a total of 122 stores in fiscal 2021, with approximately 25 stores closing in the first quarter, and approximately 97 closures planned by the end of fiscal 2021, bringing our total closures for the two year period to our previously announced target of 300 closures. The Company ended the quarter with 749 stores and square footage of 3.6 million, a decrease of 16.3% compared to the prior year. The Company permanently closed 178 stores in fiscal 2020, and since the Company's fleet optimization initiative was announced in 2013, it has permanently closed 449 stores.
Reports Q4 revenue $472.9M, consensus $420.16M. Jane Elfers, President and Chief Executive Officer announced, "Fourth quarter results exceeded our expectations across all key metrics with sales significantly exceeding our expectations in both our digital and stores channels. Consolidated digital sales increased 38% for the fourth quarter, representing 46% of total sales. For full year 2020, digital sales increased 37%, and we ended the year with an industry-leading digital penetration of 53% of total sales. For fiscal 2020, we added 1.9 million new digital customers, converted over 1 million of our store-only customers to omni-channel customers, and increased our mobile app downloads by approximately 60%. With no significant COVID-19 temporary U.S. store closures during the quarter, U.S. store sales were better than expected at 81% of last year's levels with traffic down approximately 35%. However, due to the significant impact of government mandated COVID-19 closures in Canada, impacting approximately two thirds of our Canadian stores for approximately half of the fourth quarter, Canada store sales performed at 52% of last year's levels, with traffic down 62%. With respect to our fleet optimization initiative, we closed 60 stores during the quarter bringing our total stores closures to 178 for 2020. We plan to close a total of approximately 122 stores in 2021, with 25 planned closures in the first quarter, and 97 closures planned by the end of fiscal 2021, bringing our total closures for the two year period to our previously announced target of 300 closures. Our entire organization committed to delivering the best possible results for our customers and our shareholders this past year and I want to thank each of our associates for their resilience during this very difficult period. We operated at a high level throughout the pandemic and due to our consistent and focused execution of our long-term strategic plan, we believe we have multiple opportunities ahead of us for accelerated operating margin expansion. While we are hopeful that the pandemic will subside in 2021, we will continue to address the many pandemic-related challenges we face between now and then, and, at the same time, continue to focus on realizing the significant opportunity that exists for our brands."
Catch up on today's top five analyst downgrades with this list compiled by The Fly: 1. Waste Management (WM) downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Baird with analyst David Manthey saying the stock has made no progress over the past year against a broader market that has rallied more than 15% as investors have favored pro-cyclical reopening plays over more steady, quality growth names. 2. American Express (AXP) downgraded to Neutral from Outperform at Baird with analyst David George saying while he likes the franchise and find it to be a decent re-opening play, there seems to be reasonable amount of optimism in the stock despite a generally uncertain outlook. 3. Noble Midstream (NBLX) downgraded to Underweight from Neutral at JPMorgan with analyst James Kirby saying he remains cautious on the group while producers prioritize cash flow and preserve balance sheets over production growth. 4. BlackBerry (BB) downgraded to Sell from Hold at Canaccord with analyst T. Micahel Walkley believing with the volatility in the shares from a "targeted short squeeze," the share price is above the increased price target. 5. Children's Place (PLCE) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Monness Crespi with analyst Jim Chartier saying while he sees "meaningful earnings power," he believes the stock price reflects a meaningful recovery. This list is just a portion of The Fly's full analyst coverage. To see The Fly's full Street Research coverage, click here.
As previously reported, Monness Crespi analyst Jim Chartier downgraded Children's Place to Neutral from Buy. While he sees "meaningful earnings power," he believes the stock price reflects a meaningful recovery, Chartier tells investors. Significant competitor door closings should drive market share gains and the Gymboree opportunity "remains largely untapped," but the stock has "well surpassed" his $60 price target, noted the analyst.