Department store Myer has responded to a raft of questions lobbed at them by the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) over its key performance disclosures to the market last week.
According to the Aware Letter, the ASX questioned Myer (MYR) over the materiality of its disclosures – namely sales, earnings and profit.
This comes as MYR reported a massive drop in its statutory net profit after tax (NPAT), which included a $213.3 million non-cash impairment of its newly owned Apparel Brands segment, which consists of Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Jacqui E, Dotti and Portmans, as well as 34.7 million relating to other significant items.
These other items include costs of transaction, strategic and review and implementation, restructuring and integration, asset impairment and write-offs, all reflecting “a period of significant transition and merger integration.”
Minus the impairment charge and significant items, MYR’s underlying NPAT was a positive $37 million.
“As a result, in circumstances where MYR released Underlying NPAT for FY2025, MYR did not consider that its Statutory NPAT for FY2025 was material to market expectations of its financial performance for FY2025 or that the release of this information would have a material effect on the price or value of MYR securities.”
On the day MYR shared its FY25 trading results (September 23), the fashion entity’s share price dropped from $0.64 to $0.48.
According to MYR, it considers that underlying NPAT is the most relevant indicator of its performance in a financial year. Compared to the median expectations from sell-side analysts, Myer’s underlying NPAT of $37 million was 9 per cent below what analysts predicted.
The company’s earnings before interest was 5 per cent below median projections, hitting $140 million, while MYR’s sales of $3.67 billion was around 1 per cent above them.
When asked if MYR considered that there was a variance between its expected earnings and its estimate of market expectations “of such a magnitude that reasonable person would expect information about the variance to have a material affect on the price or value of MYR’s securities”, the company said no.
It claimed the NPAT variance of 9 per cent from sell-side analysts is less than the variation percentage specified in paragraph 4(a) and (b) of the ASX Guidance Note 8 - Continuous disclosure: Listing Rules 3.1 - 3.1B, as triggering an obligation to make any disclosure.
“Accordingly, MYR believes that the variation was not of such a magnitude that a reasonable person would expect information about the variation to have a material effect on the price or value of its securities.”
Further to this, MYR added it issued a preliminary and unaudited trading update on May 23, 2025, which provided sales of Myer Retail and Myer Apparel Brands respectively for the second half of the FY25, year-to-date. The trading update also noted that MYR's 2HFY25 year-to-date performance had been impacted by a number of market wide and company specific factors.
“This included margin pressure from heightened promotional activity observed across the broader retail sector, increased costs of doing business (in particular store wages and occupancy outgoing costs impacted by inflation, as well as investment in additional leadership capabilities),” MYR reported to the ASX.
“Further, MYR considers that statutory earnings measures were not relied upon or considered relevant by analysts in relation to FY2025 and that those measures therefore are not relevant in assessing the market expectation of MYR’s FY2025 earnings.”