The company reported that consolidated revenues for the period fell by 2.7 percent to $588m, compared to $604m for the corresponding period last year, while the figure also represented a drop of 1.8 percent in same-store revenues.
The company pointed out that in the same quarter last year it sold its Trade Secret retail production division to Premier Salons Beauty, a transaction that made the comparison with the current quarter difficult.
Difficult sales comparison
As part of the deal to sell the division, Regis had continued to supply certain retail products within the Trade Secret portfolio to Premium Salons, an agreement which is estimated to have included added revenues of approximately $13m.
Discounting this sum from the comparison figure, the company says that third quarter sales in 2010 actually fell by only 0.7 percent compared to the third quarter 2009.
“We are beginning to see improvement in our same-store sales results,” said Paul Finkelstein, Regis CEO. “The month of March was our best month in a long time, with flat North American same-store sales on a calendar basis.”
Poor January sales buoyed by improvements in March
Although the company described some of its trading in January as ‘poor’, it also stated that within the quarter 39 of the trading days, mainly in the month of March, had positive comparisons with the same period in 2009.
“Our value concepts continued to outperform our higher price point Regis division and we were very pleased with our retail product business,” Finkelstein added.
The company is due to announce ist earning results for the third quarter 2010 on April 28 during a conference call which will be broadcast on the Regis corporate website.