Written by StockNews.com

Children's Place Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCE) early Thursday posted much better than expected first quarter earnings results, led by strong comparable sales gains, and offered a bullish outlook, sending its shares soaring in premarket trading.

The Secaucus, NJ-based children’s clothing retailer reported Q1:

• earnings per share (EPS) of $1.95, which was a whopping $0.31 better than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $1.64,
• revenues rose 4.1% from last year to $436.7 million, also easily exceeding analysts’ view for $422.51 million,
• comparable retail sales (comps) jumped 6.1%. Comps are considered a key indicator of a retailer’s health, because they only take into account the year-over-year sales at established locations.

Looking ahead, PLCE:

• forecast Q2 EPS of $0.70 to $0.75, which includes a big benefit from new accounting rules. That estimate doesn’t compare to analysts’s current view of $0.20 for the quarter.

For the full year, Children’s Place expects:

• EPS of $7.10 to $7.20, which again is likely not comparable to Wall Street’s $6.66 view [and]
• sees comps growing 3.0%.

The company commented via press release:

“We continued to deliver outstanding operating results in the first quarter.

Comparable retail sales, operating margin and earnings per diluted share were significantly above both last year and the high end of our guidance range.

Our first quarter comparable retail sales increased 6.1%, our highest Q1 comp in over a decade, on top of a positive 5.1% comp in the first quarter of 2016.

We generated positive comps in both our brick and mortar and digital channels for the quarter and our traffic continued to improve sequentially compared to the fourth quarter.

Our inventories are very well positioned heading into the second quarter at up only 2.8%. And, we repurchased $33 million in stock and paid $7 million in dividends in the quarter.”

Children's Place, Inc. shares rose $8.40 (+7.53%) in premarket trading Thursday. Year-to-date, PLCE had gained 10.96% prior to today’s report, versus a 5.96% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.