Dick's Sporting Goods only needed one earnings beat to erase all of last year's stock gloominess

The stock hit a record high after layoffs led to big profits and capped a big market reversal

By Melvin Backman2 min readUpdated March 14, 2024

Last fall wasn’t a good season for Dick’s Sporting Goods. It wasn’t like during the peak social distancing era of the early COVID-19 years, when everyone was rushing to buy free weights and other things to occupy their bodies and themselves while they took a break from their prior lives. People weren’t buying sporting goods, and the sporting goods were building up on Dick’s Sporting Goods shelves. The stock fell 24% in a single day, and fell further from there. The company laid off a bunch of people, eating $3.4 million in severance costs alone over the next few months. Things were looking Dick’s Sporting bad.

Fast forward to Thursday’s earnings report. Revenue for the quarter was up, more than Wall Street’s expectations and than the same time last year, to $3.9 billion. Same for profits, which came in at $296 million. On a day when U.S. retail sales data was looking more dour than Wall Street had been hoping for (sporting goods sales were down 3% in February from the same time last year), this bit of Dick’s Sporting good news is a nice beacon of light.

That helped it erase all of last year’s stock gloominess and then some: Dick’s Sporting Goods stock was up 15% in Thursday afternoon trading to hit a record high. The stock closed up more than 15%, at almost $217 per share. It has surged more than 48% so far this year.

A different sporting goods company, the apparel company Under Armour $UAA, saw its stock tank Thursday after the CEO was ousted for the founder to come back.

In a statement accompanying the earnings release, CEO Lauren Hobart said she’s expecting things to keep getting better from here.

“We are guiding to another strong year in 2024,” she said. “We plan to grow both our sales and earnings through positive comps, higher merchandise margin and productivity gains. With the continued success of our new store formats and our omnichannel experience, we will accelerate our investment in our growth strategies to drive our business forward.”

Things are looking Dick’s Sporting great.

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