Two chains say weak snow hurt sales

Two large sporting goods chains announced weak winter weather is impacting sales.

Dick’s Sporting Goods said this morning that warmer and drier weather impacted sales and inventory levels in the second half of the quarter.

The company now expects fourth quarter same store sales to be slightly negative to slightly positive vs. its previous forecast of flat to up 1%.

While sales are margins were pressured in the fourth quarter, the company said better than expected operating leverage helped shore up the bottom line.

Big 5 said fourth quarter same store sales declined 2.1%. The company had expected comps to rise in the low-to-mid single digits.

Winter apparel sales have been particularly hard it, the company said.

Excluding winter goods, fourth quarter same store sales were slightly positive.

Because of the warmer than expected weather and soft post Christmas sales, Big 5 cut its fourth quarter earnings forecast. The company now expects earnings per share of 2 to 5 cents vs. the 12 cents to 24 cents it had anticipated.