Yankee Candle Posts Q3, Nine-Month Gains

Yankee Holding Corp. and The Yankee Candle Company, Inc. posted favorable financial results for the third quarter ended Sept. 29, 2012.Sales rose 3.4% to $201.7 million. Retail sales increased 9.7% to $93.1 million, while sales from the wholesale segment stayed almost flat with a 0.5% increase to $83.6 million. Sales in the company’s International segment fell 7.3% to $25.0 million.

“We were pleased with the continued momentum and positive comps delivered by our Retail business in the third quarter, as well as the continued strong performance in our Consumer Direct and Fundraising businesses,” said Harlan Kent, chief executive officer of Yankee Candle.”We believe that the investments we are making, including those in consumer insights, digital marketing, talent and infrastructure, are continuing to drive our growth initiatives.While we continue to see steady year over year order growth in our International business, we did see a decrease in our International sales in the third quarter due to order management and shipping delays related to our implementation of a new ERP system for our International subsidiary in the UK.We believe we have taken the necessary steps to stabilize the systems and our shipping operations, and fully expect our International business to resume delivering strong growth going forward.”

For the nine months ended Sept. 29, 2012, retail sales rose 9.9% to$255.8 million. Wholesale sales also increased 3.3% to $174.3 million. International sales climbed 6.5% to $72.0 million, according to the report the company released.

“As we look ahead, we continue to see challenging consumer trends, volatility in consumer spending and general uncertainty over the economy which is further heightened in an election year,” said Kent.”We are also in the early days of assessing the long term impact of Superstorm Sandy on our business, the consumer in general and the holiday retail environment in particular.That said, we have a strong Holiday product assortment and have plans in place to support that line-up with promotional programs at levels similar to last year.In addition, our digital marketing and consumer insights initiatives will be key to our brand building efforts during this important time of year. We will be focused on flawless execution across all of our businesses throughout the Holiday season.”