Target (TGT) Q4 2025 earnings

MINNEAPOLIS — Target on Tuesday posted another quarter of falling revenue and customer traffic at its stores, though its shares rose as the retailer’s earnings beat estimates and it said it is poised to end its sales slump.

The big-box retailer, which is in the middle of a turnaround effort, said sales and traffic trends picked up in the last two months of the holiday quarter. Then sales turned positive year over year in February, which is the beginning of the current quarter.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Target CEO Michael Fiddelke said the company is “out of the gates strong this year.” While he noted that one month of growth “does not make a trend,” he said the February sales increase gives him “confidence” the company is moving back to growth.

For the current fiscal year, Target expects net sales to rise about 2% compared with the prior year and anticipates that metric will grow in every quarter of the year. That net sales growth for the year would reflect a small increase in comparable sales, the retailer said. The company added that its new stores and nonmerchandise sales, such as advertising and membership, would contribute more than 1 percentage point of growth.

Target said it expects full-year adjusted earnings per share to range from $7.50 to $8.50. Its adjusted earnings per share for the most recent full year were $7.57.

Fiddelke, who stepped into the company’s top role on Feb. 1, will try to persuade Wall Street that the retailer is gaining sales momentum at an investor meeting on Tuesday morning at Target’s Minneapolis headquarters. 

Here’s what the company reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street’s estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: $2.44 adjusted vs. $2.16 expected
• Revenue: $30.45 billion vs. $30.48 billion expected

The big-box retailer missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations for the fourth quarter, despite analysts already anticipating weaker sales. Its quarterly revenue dropped about 1.5% from $30.92 billion in the year-ago period. 

For four quarters in a row, customer traffic across the company’s stores and website has fallen. 

Target’s net income for the three-month period that ended Jan. 31 fell to $1.05 billion, or $2.30 per share, compared with $1.10 billion, or $2.41 per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, including legal settlement gains and business transformation costs, Target’s adjusted earnings per share were $2.44.

Target is trying to end several years of disappointing results driven by a mix of company missteps and economic factors. Its annual sales have been roughly flat for four years, after a significant jump in annual revenue during the Covid pandemic.

Shares of the company have dropped by nearly 32% over the past three years, as of Monday’s close, though they have risen nearly 16% so far this year.

As it tries to turn its business around,…