MINNEAPOLIS-Net income for mattress manufacturer/retailer Select Comfort jumped 116 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter (ending on Dec. 31), totaling $15.4 million, as the company ended a year marked by “significant progress,” according to its president and CEO, Bill McLaughlin.
McLaughlin said Select Comfort “redefined our top-line growth formula and achieved record bottom-line leverage and profitability.” That “top-line growth formula” resulted in a 27 percent jump in net sales for the quarter, to $189.1 million, which included average sales per Select Comfort store of $1.7 million, a new record for the company and 33 percent ahead of the fourth quarter of last year.
Gross margin slipped 10 basis points to 62.9 percent. Selling, marketing, general and administrative expenses rose 20 percent in dollars, due largely to a 29 percent hike in media expenses. As a percentage of sales, however, these expenses 320 basis points to 51.8 percent.
For the 2011 fiscal year as a whole, net income ballooned by 92 percent to $60.5 million, as net sales rose 23 percent to $743.2 million.
Looking ahead to this fiscal year, Wendy Schoppert, Select Comfort’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said the company expects “sustained revenue growth to come from a combination of new stores and higher average sales per store.”