Despite the decrease in net sales, gross profit increased slightly to $29.9 million, or 50.6 per cent of net sales, up from $29.6 million, or 46.2 per cent of net sales, in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, the company said in a press release.

Selling, general, and administrative expenses were $31.9 million, or 54.0 per cent of sales, compared to $32.7 million, or 51.1 per cent of sales, in the same period last year.

The company reported an income from operations of $5.6 million, a significant improvement from the loss from operations of $2.4 million reported in Q1 FY23. This positive change is also reflected in the net income, which was $4.4 million or $0.35 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $0.4 million or $0.03 per share in the same period last year.

Vince ended the quarter with 62 company-operated stores, a net decrease of 5 stores since the first quarter of fiscal 2023.

In the segment breakdown, the wholesale segment saw a decrease in sales by 6.8 per cent to $30.3 million compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2023. The direct-to-consumer segment experienced an 8.2 per cent decline in sales, reaching $28.9 million.

Excluding unallocated corporate expenses, the income from operations was $10.1 million, compared to $9.7 million in the same period last year.

"Our first quarter results reflect the strategic actions focused on driving improved full-price performance as we continued to reduce the promotional activity in our direct-to-consumer channel and pullback in our off-price business within our wholesale channel. As expected, these actions had a negative impact to our topline performance but helped to drive strong gross margin expansion despite incurring royalty expenses that we did not have in the prior year period," said David Stefko, interim chief executive officer of Vince Holding.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DP)