Hanesbrands Investor Day Meeting in New York

19 Feb '08

3 min read

Hanesbrands Inc announced that its strategies to build brands, reduce costs and generate cash will provide the opportunity to achieve its long-term growth goals, including those for diluted earnings per share.

Shortly after its spinoff in September 2006, Hanesbrands established long-term growth goals for 2008 and beyond, including double-digit growth for non-GAAP diluted earnings per share, which exclude actions.

Hanesbrands Chief Executive Officer Richard A. Noll provided more clarity about the double-digit diluted EPS goal. "Our goal remains to achieve double-digit growth for diluted EPS excluding actions for the next three to five years," Noll said.

"While a year from now, we may narrow our annual EPS growth goal to be in the range of 15 percent to 25 percent, for now we will maintain the more general double-digit goal because 2008 has the potential for EPS growth above this range."

The company's opportunity for 2008 EPS growth is due to declining interest expense as a result of lower debt levels and interest rates, a lower effective tax rate, and the potential for further improvements in operating performance driven by both brand building and cost-reduction efforts.

The company cautioned, however, that the challenging economic environment could mitigate some of the potential for operating performance improvement.

"Our post-spinoff growth model is pretty straightforward," Noll said. "Our generation of strong, consistent cash flow combined with cost-reduction efforts and modest sales growth yields significant opportunity to increase EPS."

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