​“The rapid growth of our business over the last two fiscal years has been accompanied by significant investments in customer acquisition and retention, new store growth, improving existing store productivity, enhancing omni-channel features and functionality, optimizing our delivery capabilities and modernizing the back-office infrastructure,” said Mike Longo, president and CEO of Hibbett, which owns both sports-focused retailer, Hibbett, and athletic apparel chain, City Gear.

“We believe this upgraded business model differentiates us from our competition and is more capable of sustained profitable growth than prior to the pandemic. Our vendor relationships remain strong, allowing us to offer a unique assortment of difficult to find products in the communities we serve. In addition, we have approximately 11,000 team members across our organization committed to providing every consumer with an outstanding experience. We are excited to continue building our Hibbett and City Gear brands and expect to continue delivering strong sales and profitability results in the years to come.”

Fourth-quarter sales inched forward 1.7% to $383.3 million, hurt by softer retail store and comparable sales in the quarter’s second half, due to supply chain issues resulting from Covid-19, said Hibbett.

“As we previously communicated, fourth quarter comparable sales decreased 1%…Although the second half of the fourth quarter was weaker than anticipated due to ongoing supply chain challenges, inflation concerns for the consumer and increased Covid-19 cases, we believe these negative factors that impacted traffic and transaction volume from late December through January will begin to subside in the coming months,” added Longo.

Looking ahead, Hibbett did post a cautious outlook, predicting flat sales growth for fiscal 2023, with comparable sales expected to be in the negative low-single digits for the full year.