Leading US party chain retailer Party City has seen its shares sink by 11.2% after reporting that its Q3 earnings had been hurt by ‘operational disruptions, inflationary pressure, helium shortages and lower-than-expected sales’.
“Our third quarter and fiscal October results were softer than expected,” stated ceo James M. Harrison, “impacted in part by temporary operational disruptions, increased inflationary pressures associated with distribution costs and helium shortages and slightly lower sales than expected.”
Despite the top line challenges, the retailer also reported that its Halloween business was down on last year, with the strengthened online business and improved temporary store offering only partially offsetting the declines seen across the permanent store portfolio.
Based on its financial performance so far this year, the retailer will be revising its original fiscal predictions for 2018.
“Looking ahead, we continue to focus on our growth initiatives and we believe these key strategies will help drive improvement given the encouraging early results we’ve seen in many areas,” continued James.
“The investments we are making across the business will further strengthen our market position as the leading wholesaler and retailer in the industry and allow us to capitalize on the exciting opportunities that will present themselves in 2019, including a Thursday Halloween and significant new licensed properties.”
Party City has also announced that its Board of Directors has approved a new $100 million share repurchase programme ehich it hopes will allow it to return value to shareholders at attractive share prices.
