Earnings season is the one time of year a company has to say, in plain numbers, what it has been doing. For most of the market, that meant another round of data center budgets. For the three consumer companies below, it meant something smaller and more human: a new drink on the shelf, a shipment that went out ahead of schedule, and a running shoe that keeps selling in countries where it did not exist five years ago.
All three reported in the last two weeks, all three trade around 30% to 85% below their record highs, and all three spent the fall doing work a stock chart cannot see.
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1. Deckers Brands is buying its own stock as fast as it can
Deckers Brands (NYSE: DECK), the parent of HOKA and UGG, trades near $80, about 55% below the record it set in January 2025. The stock fell again after the company reported on Oct. 22, which says more about expectations than the quarter. Sales rose 3.5% to a record $1.48 billion, HOKA grew 6.8%, and international sales climbed 9% while the U.S. business was flat. Management raised its full-year earnings guidance to $7.80 to $7.95 per share, which puts the stock at about 10 times this year’s profit.
The part that matters for November is what Deckers is doing with its cash. The company bought back $299 million of stock in the quarter at an average price of $93.65, and its guidance assumes $1 billion of repurchases for the full year. It still has $1.2 billion in cash and no debt. That is a company telling you it thinks its own shares are the best thing it can buy.
The risk here is that CEO Stefano Caroti called the consumer environment “challenging,” and direct-to-consumer comparable sales fell 6.4%, the channel where a brand’s heat shows up first. According to Retail Dive, UGG also depends on a cold winter. If December is warm, the fourth quarter will be too.
2. Columbia Sportswear’s fall orders arrived ahead of schedule
Columbia Sportswear (NASDAQ: COLM) sits about 32% below its April 2021 high. But the stock is on a tear over the past month. It reported on Oct. 29, and the headline was that delayed fall wholesale orders shipped sooner than the company expected, which pushed third-quarter sales up 2% to $962.6 million and earnings to $1.66 per share. Columbia raised the low end of its full-year sales and earnings guidance and said U.S. e-commerce, the channel it calls “the pinnacle expression of our brand,” is gaining ground.
