This Week's Earnings Repertoire

Last week ended with the Omicron Covid variant casting a shadow over the joy revolving around the upcoming holidays. This week, Costco COST, Stitch Fix SFIX, Lululemon Athletica LULU, and GameStop Corporation GME will show how they are weathering global challenges that even got the big ones tripped up.

1. Stitch Fix

The online apparel specialist's shares have been having a hard time this year, which means the bar is set low for its Tuesday report. Back in September, management expected sales growth to slow to as low as 15% in the new fiscal year, compared to last year's 23%. Although that slowdown might be temporary, Wall Street is worried about the impact of slowing growth, rising competition, and pressured margins due to supply chain disruptions and inflationary costs.

Adding direct shopping offerings is expected to help the subscription-based apparel delivery service business unlock a much bigger addressable market. But as it faces off well-established rivals, Stitch Fix has fewer competitive advantages.

Everyone's eyes will be on the engagement metrics such as average spending will help show whether Stitch Fix is succeeding in reaccelerating sales growth. But investors are doubting the business' capability to recapture that 20% sales growth momentum, let alone go beyond it.

2. GameStop

After the bell on Wednesday, GameStop has a lot to prove as management is yet to show the real turnaround plan. The reinvigorated video game retailer classified by CNBC's Jim Cramer as the "king of the meme stocks" is expected to report sales at $1.2 billion that resulted in a loss of 52 cents. The only thing certain is that the stock will move as investors are used to a wild ride with this stock that kicked off the year reaching for the stars, only to go on to shed nearly half of its value throughout the year.

3.  Costco's inventory wins

Investors are expecting the warehouse retailer to report growth of 13% YoY that translates to sales of $49 billion. Expectations are high for the world's second-biggest retailer when it reports its earnings on Thursday afternoon as its biggest competitor, Walmart WMT, recently revealed strong sales growth as it succeeded to overcome supply and inventory challenges that have tripped up smaller peers. Costco likely handled these issues as it licenses its own shipping fleet earlier this year.

Moreover, any gains in renewal rate, as well as online and physical customer traffic, could lay the groundwork for higher membership fees that power most of Costco's annual earnings.

4. Lululemon's holiday outlook

After upgrading its 2021 outlook in its previous two earnings reports, Lululemon is expected to provide the third upgrade on Thursday. Annual sales guidance is currently at $6.3 billion which is a significant increase from $4.4 billion before the pandemic struck.

To further improve, Lululemon needs to show it can keep up the momentum on pricing after profitability soared to new highs. For the last reported quarter, gross profit margin made 58% of sales with operating profit being over 20% of revenue. This year's stock rally is greatly owed to that success fueled by strong demand for its athleisure products but inflationary pressures threaten to spoil that "picture perfect" trend.

However, even if this is the case, growth avenues such as new geographies and new demographics likes menswear and outerwear can help Lululemon overcome those short-term constraints that will ease over the next few quarters. All in all, the retailer has plenty of room to run.

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