Market round-up: Columbia, Tiffany, Burberry and Inditex

Big news on Wednesday was Columbia Sportswear Co.

lowered its fourth-quarter expectations because its net sales have suffered from mild winter weather in North America during most of the holiday shopping season, lower customer traffic in key markets and a more promotional environment.

After the company released this weary update, its shares fell 7.1 percent to 48.45 dollars in recent after-hours trading.

The owner of brands such as Mountain Hardwear, Montrail and Pacific Trail said in a note the combination led to lower-than-expected sales, as well as increased order cancellations and fewer reorders from wholesale customers--mostly in the U.S. About a third of the sales shortfall was attributed to a shift of factory-direct shipments of international distributors' spring 2013 advance orders into the first quarter.

For the current quarter, the company lowered its earnings view to 37 million dollars to 40 million amid a net sales decline of 5 percent to 499 million dollars to 503 million, compared with its October estimate for 44 million dollars and net sales growth of as much as 1.5 percent.

Meanwhile, analysts at Zacks Investment Research downgraded Tiffany & Company to a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) earlier this week.”Tiffany has witnessed sharp downward estimate revisions after reporting soft holiday sales numbers that prompted management to take a conservative stance on its future earnings. Results were at the lower end of management’s expectations. It seems that the company is at an unfavourable position as the challenging economy is taking away some of the sheen from this jewelry retailer,” the analysis team argued. “On a constant-currency basis, total worldwide net sales for the two months period ended Dec 31, 2012, marked an increase of 4 percent, whereas comparable-store sales (comps) remained flat. We observe that the rate of growth of net sales and comps decelerated from 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively, registered during the two months period ended Dec. 31, 2011,” they concluded.

In London, British stocks traded lower, weighed down by the World Bank´s gloomy prospect for the market in the coming months.The FTSE 100 index dropped 0.4 percent to 6,095.62, while Burberry Group PLC shares rose 1 percent. Credit Suisse analyst Rogerio Fujimori raised his target price after the luxury apparel company on Tuesday produced a better-than-expected retail report.

Finally, analysts at Nomura have upgraded Inditex to a 'buy' rating from 'neutral' after weighing in on the Spanish fashion retailer's higher returns in apparel., reported ‘MarketWatch’.

The broker explained that Inditex takes advantage of catalysts like the proximity of its sourcing and its variety of brands: "We expect that this model will be resilient to the continuing wave of emerging market labour cost inflation." They also stressed that "Without strong productivity gains we can envisage many garments becoming more expensive to source in Asia in five years' time. This could pose challenges to basic models with high gross margin in our opinion, but not to Inditex."

Inditex stock was trading up on Wednesday, up around the 0.40 percent to 105.10 euros.