Brown Shoe Inc.

Company Description

Brown Shoe has more than 1,100 shoe stores world wide and another 300 specialty retail locations. Brands include Dr. Scholl's, Famous Footwear and others.

Beat the Street

On Mar 3 Brown Shoe beat expectations when it reported an 8.6% increase in sales, to $566 million. Combined with improved margins, the company beat earnings expectations by 4 cents per share.

Earnings per shares came in at 19 cents, on $8.1 million in net income. This was up from a loss of 28 cents per share, or $11.5 million.

Estimates Jump

Over the past month the full-year consensus for fiscal 2011 is up 15 cents, to 72 cents. Next year's average is up the same amount, to 91 cents.

If Brown Shoe can hit these targets, year-over-year earnings growth will be 81% and 26, respectively.

The Chart

Shares of BWS are trading at 52-week highs and have been on a nice run over the past month. Shares are trading at about 20 times forward earnings, but if estimates continue to climb there could be value there.

Bill Wilton is the Growth Stock Strategist for Zacks.com. He is also the Editor in charge of the market-beating Zacks Growth Trader service

Read the full analyst report on BWS