Hot Topic Revenue, Profit Drops In Q4, 2009 March 11, 2010
- Retail
By Glenn Peoples, L.A.
Hot Topic earned $8 million in its 2009 fiscal fourth quarter (ending January 30) and $12 million for the full year, according to its Wednesday earnings release. The teen retailer reported fourth quarter revenue of $214 million, down from $238 million, and full-year revenue of $737 million, down from $761 million. Music and music-related clothing and accessories make up an important part of the Los Angeles-based company’s product offering.
Shockhound, Hot Topic’s music download and merchandise site web site, had expenses of $0.02 per diluted share during the fourth quarter and $0.07 in the full year, which comes out to $880,000 and $3.1 million, respectively. During the earnings call, the company said it is concentrating on increasing ShockHound’s traffic and dollars up to a breakeven level over the next couple of years.
The music category, the company said, has “started to level out” and will be the first to stabilize as overall sales recover.
In addition, the company said it plans to scale back it’s the number of Local Static events that host local bands for in-store performances.
“We are not planning on doing more than we did last year. In fact, we are probably going to do a little less because we are going to focus on quality as opposed to quantity, really tracking these bands, how many fans they pull, maybe doing a single band in multiple stores, seeing how their following grows and then graduating them on. We’d like a better success rate in graduating bands.”
Lastly, Hot Topic said it will open about ten new stores, remodel or relocate 25 to 30 stores and close 5 to 10 stores in 2010.
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