Footwear and accessories discount retailer Designer Brands (NYSE: DBI) will be announcing earnings results this Thursday morning. Here’s what you need to know.

Designer Brands missed analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $752.4 million, down 3.2% year on year. It was a very strong quarter for the company, with a beat of analysts’ EPS estimates and an impressive beat of analysts’ gross margin estimates.

Is Designer Brands a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free for active Edge members.

This quarter, the market is expecting Designer Brands’s revenue to be flat year on year, improving from the 5.4% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year.

Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Designer Brands has missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates multiple times over the last two years.

Looking at Designer Brands’s peers in the apparel and footwear retail segment, some have already reported their Q4 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Tilly's delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 5.3%, beating analysts’ expectations by 4.3%, and Victoria's Secret reported revenues up 7.8%, topping estimates by 2%. Tilly's traded up 47.2% following the results while Victoria's Secret was down 22.1%.

Read our full analysis of Tilly’s results here and Victoria's Secret’s results here.

The outlook for 2025 remains clouded by potential trade policy changes and corporate tax discussions, which could impact business confidence and growth. While some of the apparel and footwear retail stocks have shown solid performance in this choppy environment, the group has generally underperformed, with share prices down 6.4% on average over the last month. Designer Brands is down 28.8% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $6.75 (compared to the current share price of $5.31).

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