Wolverine Worldwide's profitability threatened in Q3

By

Olivier Guyot

Published
Oct 18, 2012

Though Wolverine Worldwide are expecting to gain $1.64 billion this year thanks to the acquisition of Collective Brands Inc. last week, the group is still struggling after poor results from previous quarters.

For the third quarter, which ended on 8 September, Wolverine Worldwide followed in the same trend as their first quarter results, with turnover declining by 2% to $353 million.

For the same period last year, the group showed an increase of 13% against the results of 2010. Performance in America has been good this year but the company lost out on exchange rates through activity in Europe. Efforts to manage reserves were not enough to balance these events and as a result operating profit for the period drops from 56 to 46 million dollars. Net earnings went from 40 to 33 million dollars.

The group has experienced a decrease in sales despite promising start of year predictions for their outdoor division. The group reached $134 million in sales, a decrease of 8% on the previous quarter. The Lifestyle division also saw a decrease of 5%, with sales of $53 million whereas the Heritage saw a small increase of 1% with $130 million. Heritage provides the group with 37% of its activity and Outdoor slightly more with 38%.

For the next quarter, the groups who own 16 brands are looking to earn $2.5 billion dollars in sales.