TJX Cos. posted a better-than-expected holiday quarter driven entirely by customer transactions, indicating the off-price giant is still taking market share from department stores and other discounters as price-conscious consumers hunt for deals.
The discounter behind T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s and HomeGoods beat Wall Street’s expectations on the top and bottom lines, but it gave cautious guidance for the current fiscal year and current quarter.
For its fiscal 2026, TJX is planning for comparable sales to rise between 2% and 3%, below Wall Street expectations of up 3.4%, according to StreetAccount. Its fiscal 2026 earnings guidance of between $4.34 and $4.43 per share is well below estimates of $4.59 per share, according to LSEG, and its forecast for its current quarter also looks weaker than expected.
TJX is expecting comparable sales to climb between 2% and 3%, behind StreetAccount estimates of 3.4%, and it’s expecting earnings per share to be between 87 cents and 89 cents. Analysts were looking for 99 cents per share, according to LSEG.
A strong U.S. dollar and unfavorable exchange rates are expected to weigh on earnings growth by 3% in fiscal 2026, the company said in a news release. Those conditions have impacted other retailers such as Levi Strauss. Wall Street doesn’t appear to be punishing TJX over its outlook, as its shares rose more than 3% in premarket trading.
Here’s how TJX did in its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $1.23vs. $1.16 expected
- Revenue: $16.35 billion vs. $16.20 billion expected
The company’s reported net income for the three-month period that ended Feb. 1 was $1.40 billion, or $1.23 per share, roughly flat compared with $1.40 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year earlier.
Sales were basically unchanged at $16.35 billion, compared with $16.41 billion a year earlier. In the year-ago period, TJX benefited from an extra selling week that it didn’t have in fiscal 2025.
While sales were flat during the quarter, TJX posted just about the same in revenue in 13 weeks in fiscal 2025 as it did in 14 weeks in fiscal 2024. Comparable sales, a key industry indicator that excludes new stores and online sales, also grew 5% during its fiscal fourth quarter, well ahead of estimates of 3.1%, according to StreetAccount.
For the full fiscal year, TJX sales grew 4% to $56.4 billion with one less selling week than the year-ago period.
“Our fourth quarter sales, profitability, and earnings per share were all well above our expectations. I am particularly pleased that our overall comp store sales growth of 5% for the quarter was due to strong increases in comp sales and customer transactions at every division,” CEO Ernie Herrman said in a news release.
“Longer term, we see many opportunities to successfully grow our business and deliver value to even more consumers around the world,” he added.
TJX has previously said it was seeing high rates of theft and other forms of inventory loss, known as shrink, in its stores, but those trends appear to be slowing down. During the quarter, its pretax profit margin and gross margin benefited from “lower than expected inventory shrink expense,” the company said.
For fiscal 2025, lower shrink expenses increased TJX’s gross profit margin by 0.2 percentage point.
Last year, TJX said it had deployed body cameras in some of its stores, and said the devices had been effective in reducing shrink. Executives have said the cameras were an effective de-escalation tool, and people were less likely to behave badly when they knew they were being videotaped.
In December, CNBC reported that Walmart had deployed a similar program.
Hunting for deals
The discounter behind T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s and HomeGoods has been on a torrid growth path over the last couple of years as consumers look for cheaper options amid persistent inflation, high interest rates and an uncertain economic outlook.
Shoppers who’ve long gone to department stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and even discounter Target have looked to TJX to buy not just clothes, but also household goods and other discretionary items they want but aren’t willing to pay full price for.
That trade-down effect has been a boon to TJX, and even as its growth begins to slow, it’s one of the few retailers that stands to benefit from President Donald Trump‘s tariff policies. To avoid paying high duties for imports out of China, and potentially Mexico and Canada, some companies have been stocking up and over-ordering deliveries.
If they’re ultimately unable to sell through that inventory and end up needing to liquidate it in off-price channels, that could be advantageous to TJX, which has long benefited from supply chain disruptions and other “chaos” in the market, Herrman told analysts in November when the company reported fiscal third-quarter earnings.
As TJX’s growth has slowed in the U.S., the discounter has started expanding overseas. It’s taken a stake in Brands for Less, a Dubai-based off-price chain, and also plans to enter Spain early next year.
During the quarter, comparable sales at TJX Canada grew 10%, on top of 6% growth in the prior-year period. Comparable sales at TJX International, which includes Europe and Australia, climbed 7%, after 3% growth last year.
Comparable sales growth at Marmaxx, which includes TJ Maxx, Marshall’s and Sierra, slowed slightly to 4%, compared with 5% in the year ago period. HomeGoods and Homesense also posted lower comparable sales growth of 5%, compared with 7% in the year-ago period.
The TJX home goods brands did manage to outperform the overall market, indicating the company is taking share in an environment that’s been particularly tough for furniture and home retailers, said GlobalData managing director Neil Saunders in a research note.
“The positioning here is helpful in that the emphasis from consumers was firmly on making smaller updates to decor and refreshing things like soft furnishings or lighting in rooms,” said Saunders. “This plays into the categories where HomeGoods and HomeSense play most strongly. As ever, good levels of newness – especially in seasonal decor – were very helpful in driving foot traffic to stores.”