Whole Foods Shares Tumbled Hard After This News

Whole Foods shares took a tumble in after-hours trading on Wednesday when the company reported earnings. The stock fell nearly 4% after the release.

Revenue and comparable sales both were lower than what Wall Street had expected. Investors also weren’t thrilled to learn that the company lowered its full-year sales and earnings guidance.

For Q1, Whole Foods reported an adjusted 39 cents a share. Although this was in line with a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters, the company’s revenue at $4.92 billion was short of the $4.98 billion expected.

John Mackey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market stated, “In this increasingly competitive marketplace, we are committed to taking every step necessary to improve comps and deliver higher returns for our shareholders.”

“To this end, we are refining our growth strategy, refocusing our efforts on best serving our core customers, and moving faster to fully implement category management. Evolving our purchasing operating model while developing data-rich, customer-centric category management capabilities is critical to our go-forward merchandising, pricing, marketing and affinity strategies.”

Comparable sales for the first quarter fell 2.4 percent. FactSet had been expecting a 1.8 percent decline.

For the full year, Whole Foods now expects sales growth of “1.5 percent or greater.” This is compared to its prior forecast of a 2.5 percent to 4.5 percent increase.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) and have not been compensated for this article.