Q2 Sales Rise 2% At Sally Beauty

Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc.'s second quarter sales rose 2.4% to $919.5 million. The gain was attributed to the addition of new stores and growth in same store sales. The impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates in the fiscal 2014 second quarter was not material. Consolidated same store sales in the fiscal 2014 second quarter increased by 1.0% compared to a decline of 0.8% in the fiscal 2013 second quarter. Fiscal 2014 second quarter sales performance in both business segments in the US were negatively impacted by lower traffic driven primarily by unfavorable weather.


“Overall performance was solid with positive consolidated same store sales growth of 1%, sales growth of 2.4% and 10 bps of gross margin expansion,” said  Gary Winterhalter, chairman, president and chief executive officer. “Extremely unfavorable weather in the US resulted in 5,426 store days closed in the fiscal 2014 second quarter versus 1,328 in the prior year, resulting in lower traffic and sales growth in the US Sally and CosmoProf stores. The good news is that we saw positive traffic performance in the regions that were not materially impacted by store closures which gives me confidence that we are on the right track to improve retail traffic in the Sally US stores.”


By segment, Sally Beauty Supply's sales increased 2.5% to $569.6 million. Sales growth is attributed to net new store openings, same store sales growth and a favorable impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates of $2.5 million. The Beauty System Group's sales rose 2.2% to $349.9 million. Sales growth is attributed to net new store openings and same store sales growth and was partially offset by the unfavorable impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates of $2.4 million.


Consolidated gross profit for the fiscal 2014 second quarter was $456.4 million, an increase of 2.7% over gross profit of $444.5 million for the fiscal 2013 second quarter. Gross profit as a percent of sales was 49.6%, a 10 basis point improvement from the fiscal 2013 second quarter. Consolidated gross profit margin expansion for fiscal year 2014 is now expected to be in the range of 20 basis points to 30 basis points versus previous expectations of 30 basis points to 40 basis points.