Children's Place (NASDAQ: PLCE) reported Q4 EPS of $1.01, $1.24 better than the analyst estimate of ($0.23). Revenue for the quarter came in at $472.9 million versus the consensus estimate of $420.16 million.

Jane Elfers, President and Chief Executive Officer announced, “Fourth quarter results exceeded our expectations across all key metrics with sales significantly exceeding our expectations in both our digital and stores channels. Consolidated digital sales increased 38% for the fourth quarter, representing 46% of total sales. For full year 2020, digital sales increased 37%, and we ended the year with an industry-leading digital penetration of 53% of total sales. For fiscal 2020, we added 1.9 million new digital customers, converted over 1 million of our store-only customers to omni-channel customers, and increased our mobile app downloads by approximately 60%. With no significant COVID-19 temporary U.S. store closures during the quarter, U.S. store sales were better than expected at 81% of last year’s levels with traffic down approximately 35%. However, due to the significant impact of government mandated COVID-19 closures in Canada, impacting approximately two thirds of our Canadian stores for approximately half of the fourth quarter, Canada store sales performed at 52% of last year’s levels, with traffic down 62%.”

Ms. Elfers continued, “With respect to our fleet optimization initiative, we closed 60 stores during the quarter bringing our total stores closures to 178 for 2020. We plan to close a total of approximately 122 stores in 2021, with 25 planned closures in the first quarter, and 97 closures planned by the end of fiscal 2021, bringing our total closures for the two year period to our previously announced target of 300 closures.”Ms. Elfers concluded, “Our entire organization committed to delivering the best possible results for our customers and our shareholders this past year and I want to thank each of our associates for their resilience during this very difficult period. We operated at a high level throughout the pandemic and due to our consistent and focused execution of our long-term strategic plan, we believe we have multiple opportunities ahead of us for accelerated operating margin expansion. While we are hopeful that the pandemic will subside in 2021, we will continue to address the many pandemic-related challenges we face between now and then, and, at the same time, continue to focus on realizing the significant opportunity that exists for our brands.”

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