TJX Companies Inc.’s stock jumped 3.6% in premarket trade Tuesday, after the apparel and home fashions retailer reported better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results and lifted its full-year profit outlook. For the quarter ended Aug. 1, earnings rose to $549.3 million, or 80 cents a share, from $517.6 million, or 73 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. That beat the FactSet earnings-per-share consensus of 76 cents. Sales increased to $7.36 billion from $6.92 billion, above the FactSet consensus of $7.26 billion, with same-store sales growth of 6% doubling up expectations of 3% growth. Gross profit margin improved by 0.5 percentage points to 29.1%. TJX raised its full-year EPS outlook to a range of $3.24 to $3.28 from $3.21 to $3.27. “It was great to see that comp sales were entirely driven by customer traffic–our fifth consecutive quarter of sequential traffic improvement–and that we had strong sales across all of our divisions,” said Chief Executive Carol Meyrowitz. The stock has gained 4.4% year to date through Monday, while the S&P 500 has tacked on 2.1%.
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