West 49 Inc, Canada's leading action sport retailer, reported its financial results for its third quarter of fiscal 2008, ended October 27, 2007. All figures are reported in Canadian dollars.
Third quarter highlights:
• Net sales increased 1.5% to $59.1 million;
• Gross margin of $16.8 million, or 28.4% of net sales;
• Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased 10 basis points as a rate to net sales;
• Normalized EBITDA(1) of $5.8 million;
• Net income of $2.6 million, or $0.04 per share (excluding the after-tax impact of the restructuring costs during the quarter);
• The Company substantially completed the roll-out of its shared services initiative; and
• The Company opened four new stores, relocated and expanded three stores and closed a store.
"During the third quarter, we achieved several of our strategic objectives for fiscal 2008," said Sam Baio, Chief Executive Officer of West 49 Inc.
"We substantially completed the implementation of our shared services model, having centralized our finance, human resources, information technology, store operations and store development functions. This was a significant undertaking, which we continue to expect will yield improvements to profitability while also enhancing our controls and better positioning the Company for future growth.
We also achieved our real estate targets for new store openings, relocations and expansions, and growth in total square footage. With four new stores opened during the quarter we met our target for opening 10 to 12 new stores for the year.