Three teen retailers will stop reporting same-store sales

NEW YORK—Three major teen retailers will stop reporting their monthly sales performance, according to a report in Bloomberg News today. Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale and American Eagle Outfitters will all cease reporting monthly same-store sales after tomorrow’s January figures come out.

Abercrombie & Fitch officially announced last November that it would stop reporting monthly numbers in February, timed to the new fiscal year.

Same-store sales numbers help analysts and investors track the performance of public retailers. Same-store sales numbers compare sales of stores open at least a year, which eliminates new and closed stores. There is some debate about whether or not watching monthly figures focuses too much on short term performance.

While publicly traded retail companies aren’t legally obligated to report monthly sales results, most do. Macy’s Inc. stopped reporting its monthly numbers for about six months during the recession in 2008. When the retailer resumed, CEO Terry Lundgren said, “While we continue to believe that sales on a monthly basis are an incomplete and sometimes misleading measure of a retailer’s performance, we will again provide this information so investors have a sense of the direction of our business on a more frequent basis through this uncertain time.”

Currently, Wal-Mart, American Apparel, Pacific Sunwear, Jos. A. Bank and Men’s Wearhouse are among the retailers no longer reporting same-store sales each month.