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Michael Kors Slides Most in Almost 16 Months as Home Market Lags

Michael Kors Slides Most in Almost 16 Months as Home Market Lags

(Bloomberg) -- Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. is struggling to convince shoppers in its home market to buy its handbags, even as demand surges abroad.

Retail sales of the Michael Kors brand in the Americas fell by 2.5 percent in the latest quarter, excluding wholesale and licensing revenue, the lowest fiscal-fourth-quarter regional tally since March 2014. At the same time, the high-end brand saw double-digit sales jumps in its smaller European and Asian markets.

Michael Kors Slides Most in Almost 16 Months as Home Market Lags

Kors’s weakness in the Americas is “the most damning figure” in the quarterly report, according to Neil Saunders, an analyst at GlobalData Retail. The company’s regional results have been on a downward trend for some time and continues to lose ground.

“This number clearly indicates that Michael Kors is not back to full strength and still has a lot of work to do on its proposition,” Saunders said in a note to clients.

The shares fell as much as 14 percent as of 12;17 p.m. in New York, the biggest intraday drop since February 2017, even after the retailer beat on profit and reported a revenue forecast for the year above estimates.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Bhasin in New York at kbhasin4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Lisa Wolfson

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