JoS. A. Bank Clothiers CEO: Q2 slow so far

JoS. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc. (Nasdaq:JOSB) CEO Robert Wildrick said the men’s clothing retailer’s second quarter is “slow” so far, but that all-important Father’s Day-buying could drastically change results. Wildrick made the comments during a midday Thursday conference call.

“We do plan to promote heavily on TV and on the radio to capture as much Father’s Day business as is possible,” Wildrick said. “Looking forward, costs are going up around the world and energy prices are having some effect on margin. But this does affect all retailers and because we control our own production and cut out the middleman, we should be able to mitigate some of these costs and believe we have a slight advantage over other retailers.”

The chief executive acknowledged that rising gas prices and the credit crisis are affecting retail sales trends.

“While we feel this will be a year of continued challenges, we feel very strongly that we have enough advantages to do better than the competition while growing our store base, growing our market share and growing our brand awareness,” Wildrick said. “We’ll work hard to improve our company and fare better than the rest.”

JoS. A Bank reported Wednesday afternoon that its first-quarter net earnings totaled $9.8 million, or $0.53 per share, beating Wall Street’s expectation of earning $0.46 per share. The firm’s year-earlier earnings were $8.4 million, or $0.45 per share.

The company was able to achieve earnings improvement through adequate inventory, the ability to react quickly to stimulate sales and a can-do attitude, the CEO said.

“We believe companies that try to manage expectations by saying they will have a down year generally do, so we manage expenses and aggressively try to increase sales and always try to have an up quarter and especially an up year,” Wildrick said. “Our attitude is ‘always try to win’ and we never give up in a quarter. We try to win every day in everything we do and we plan to win this year.”

Revenue for the three months ended May 5 increased 12% to $145.4 million from $129.5 million a year ago. Wall Street analysts, on average, projected . . .

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