Abercrombie & Fitch Co. reports second quarter fiscal 2026 results on Wednesday, August 26, before the US market opens. The company has said the press release will be issued shortly after 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time, with a conference call for all interested parties at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The date and format were confirmed in a company announcement issued on July 31.
The print matters beyond the apparel sector. Abercrombie is one of the cleanest available reads on how a mid-cap US importer is absorbing a tariff regime that has been rewritten twice this year, and on whether the refunds now flowing out of US Customs and Border Protection are reaching income statements or sitting off to the side.
In short
- Report date: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, before the bell, with the earnings call at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
- The bar: the Zacks consensus estimate is about $1.24 billion in net sales, roughly 2.8% above the year-ago quarter, and $1.90 in earnings per diluted share, which would be a decline of about 18.1% year over year.
- Company guidance: net sales growth of 2% to 4%, earnings per diluted share of $1.80 to $2.00, and an operating margin around 10% that already absorbs roughly $20 million of tariff-related cost.
- The refund question: Abercrombie has applied for a tariff refund of roughly $100 million and has not built it into its outlook, which puts the company in the same posture as several peers reporting this month.
- The soft spot: EMEA, where first quarter net sales fell about 10% and where management attributed part of the shortfall to Middle East conflict disruption weighted toward the Hollister brands.
What Abercrombie is scheduled to report on August 26
The company said in a July 31 announcement that it will host its quarterly earnings conference call on Wednesday, August 26, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. A results presentation is expected on the corporate site at approximately 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time, with the press release issued shortly after that. Abercrombie has told investors that material information may be disseminated initially or exclusively through its website.
That timing places Abercrombie in the second wave of US retail earnings for the quarter, after the big-box operators and ahead of the specialty and off-price names. Kohl’s is also scheduled for August 26. Burlington Stores has set its second quarter release for August 27 before market open with a call at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and Ulta Beauty is scheduled the same day after the close.
The clustering matters for interpretation. When several apparel and off-price retailers report within 48 hours of each other, the market tends to read the first print as a proxy for the group, which amplifies the share price reaction to whichever company lands first.
Abercrombie runs a retail fiscal year, so the second quarter of fiscal 2026 covers the summer selling season and the front end of back-to-school. The comparative base is the year-ago quarter in which the company reported roughly $1.2 billion of net sales.
That base is demanding on the earnings line rather than the sales line. Consensus points to modest revenue growth against a materially lower profit figure, which is the arithmetic signature of a margin story rather than a demand story.
What the consensus numbers actually demand
The Zacks consensus estimate for second quarter revenue sits at about $1.24 billion, implying growth of roughly 2.8% from the year-ago quarter. The consensus mark for earnings is $1.90 per share, which implies a fall of about 18.1% from the prior-year figure.
Set against company guidance, consensus is not making a heroic call. Abercrombie guided to net sales growth of 2% to 4% and earnings per diluted share of $1.80 to $2.00, so the street is sitting near the midpoint on both.
Model estimates cited in pre-earnings coverage put Americas net sales up about 3.1%, EMEA up about 4.1%, and APAC up about 0.5% for the quarter. The EMEA figure is the one that carries the most uncertainty, because it assumes a return to growth in a region that fell about 10% in the first quarter.
If EMEA fails to turn, the revenue line can still clear the low end of guidance on Americas strength alone. What it cannot easily do is clear the high end, because EMEA has been the swing factor in each of the last two prints.
The Americas assumption carries its own qualifier. The second quarter straddles the start of back-to-school buying, a period in which US apparel demand is driven as much as anything by the timing of state sales tax holidays and school calendars, which shift the split between the July and August weeks year to year.
US July retail sales data released earlier this month showed back-to-school spending arriving against a backdrop of elevated goods costs. That combination tends to favor retailers with pricing power and clean inventory, which is the position Abercrombie has claimed for several quarters.
The earnings decline nobody is disputing
A roughly 18% year-over-year earnings decline on 3% sales growth is a compression of about 250 basis points to 300 basis points at the operating line, depending on share count and tax. Guidance frames this explicitly: an operating margin near 10% for the quarter against a full-year target of 12% to 12.5%.
Three inputs drive that gap. Tariff cost of roughly $20 million in the quarter, continued investment spending on stores, marketing and technology, and regional mix that leans on lower-margin promotional activity in EMEA.
The company has not signalled that any of the three reverses inside the quarter. What management can signal on the call is whether the second half assumption still holds.
Why a $20 million tariff line sits at the center of the quarter
Abercrombie built its second quarter outlook on an assumed effective tariff rate of about 10%, stepping up to about 15% for the second half of fiscal 2026. The $20 million figure inside the roughly 10% operating margin guide is the cash consequence of that assumption.
Those are assumptions, not settled facts. The effective rate an apparel importer pays in any given month depends on country of origin mix, the classification of each garment, and which of several overlapping US tariff programs applies to a given entry.
The 10% to 15% step-up is a management estimate about the second half, made before the full shape of the current tariff schedule was clear. If the realized rate lands above 15%, the full-year earnings range of $10.20 to $11.00 per diluted share comes under pressure without any change in consumer demand.
Apparel is unusually exposed to this arithmetic because base duty rates on garments were already high before the current programs were layered on. Cotton knitwear and denim carry some of the highest most-favored-nation rates in the US tariff schedule, so a percentage point of additional duty applies on top of an already elevated base.
The layering is what makes a single blended number necessary. An apparel entry can carry a base most-favored-nation rate, a country-level action, and a program-level duty at the same time, and the applicable stack changes with the country of origin rather than with the garment.
That is why management teams have moved to guiding on an assumed effective rate. It compresses a portfolio of country and product exposures into one forecastable input, at the cost of hiding which specific lane is driving the change.
It also explains why quarterly tariff disclosures across US retail have become less comparable rather than more. Two companies quoting a similar effective rate can be describing entirely different sourcing footprints and entirely different sensitivities to the next policy action.
Investors watching the same dynamic in adjacent categories have seen the TJX quarter tested by a 50% Canada tariff earlier this month, a reminder that country-level actions can reprice a sourcing lane with very little notice.
The refund that is not in the guidance
The larger number is the one Abercrombie has deliberately excluded. The company has applied for a tariff refund of roughly $100 million and has said it did not factor that potential inflow into its outlook.
That decision follows the Supreme Court ruling of February 20, 2026, in which the court held 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not grant the president authority to impose tariffs of indefinite scope. The ruling opened a refund pathway for importers who paid duties under the invalidated program.
Excluding the refund from guidance is conservative and it is also standard practice this season. Several US retailers reporting in August have described refund claims as filed but not recognized, which keeps the item out of guided earnings until cash actually lands.
How the first quarter set up this print
Abercrombie reported first quarter fiscal 2026 results on May 27. Net sales were a record at roughly $1.1 billion, up about 2% year over year, which the company described as its fourteenth consecutive quarter of growth.
Earnings per diluted share came in at $1.47, above the company’s own outlook range, on an operating margin of 8.0%. Management maintained the full-year outlook on net sales, operating margin and earnings per share despite the regional disruption.
The Abercrombie brands grew net sales about 3% in the first quarter. The Hollister brands were flat against a record prior-year comparison, with comparable sales down about 2%.
That split is the operating question for August 26. Hollister skews younger and skews more heavily to EMEA promotional dynamics, so a flat-to-negative Hollister comp in a back-to-school quarter would carry more weight than the same result in a spring quarter.
The EMEA problem
EMEA net sales fell about 10% in the first quarter, against Americas up about 3% and APAC up about 24%. Management said the Middle East conflict reduced first quarter total company sales growth by more than 50 basis points relative to its prior outlook, with the impact skewed heavily toward Hollister.
On the first quarter call, analysts pressed management repeatedly on whether promotional intensity had increased in the region. Chief financial officer Robert Ball emphasized disciplined inventory and promotional management alongside modest average unit retail growth, and reiterated full-year revenue growth of 3% to 5% with an operating margin of 12% to 12.5%.
Chief executive Fran Horowitz framed the year as starting from a position of strength, with the company focused on delivering a fourth straight year of sales growth. The August 26 print is the first hard test of whether that framing survives a second consecutive quarter of European softness.
How Abercrombie compares with peers on tariff exposure
The August reporting season has produced an unusually clear cross-section of how US retailers are handling both tariff costs and tariff refunds. The pattern is not uniform, and the differences say a lot about balance sheet posture and sourcing footprint.
| Company | Reporting date | Tariff item disclosed | Treatment in guidance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abercrombie & Fitch | August 26, 2026 | About $20m Q2 cost; about $100m refund claim | Cost included; refund excluded |
| Walmart | Reported August 20, 2026 | $2.9bn IEEPA refund received | Recognized and redeployed into price rollbacks |
| Dillard’s | Reported August 2026 | $37.2m refund booked | Recognized in the quarter, profit up about 34% |
| Estée Lauder | Reported August 19, 2026 | About $100m tariff cost headwind | Cost included in outlook |
| Dollar General | August 27, 2026 | Tariff refund claim outstanding | Excluded from guidance |
Two camps are visible. Retailers that have already received cash, such as Walmart with its $2.9 billion inflow, have been able to recognize the benefit and make a visible choice about where it goes. Walmart chose price, and put the refund into thousands of rollbacks while comparable sales growth slowed.
Retailers still waiting, including Abercrombie, are carrying an unrecognized asset of uncertain timing. Dillard’s sits between the two, having booked a $37.2 million refund that lifted quarterly profit by about 34%, which shows how quickly a mid-cap income statement moves when the cash arrives.
Why sourcing footprint drives the spread
Apparel supply chains have been shifting away from single-country concentration for several years, which changes the shape of tariff exposure rather than removing it. A retailer sourcing across Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Central America faces a blended rate that moves with each country-level action.
That blending explains why two apparel importers with similar revenue can report materially different tariff costs in the same quarter. It also explains why management teams have moved to guiding on an assumed effective rate rather than on a program-by-program basis.
What the refund pipeline looks like across US retail
The scale of the refund process is the reason a $100 million claim from a mid-cap retailer is not unusual. US Customs and Border Protection had paid roughly $100 billion in IEEPA-related refunds as of July 31, according to trade press reporting on agency figures.
The underlying pool is larger still. More than 330,000 importers paid a combined $166 billion under the invalidated program across more than 53 million shipments, which leaves a substantial balance outstanding even after the payments made to date.
| Metric | Figure | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total paid under IEEPA | About $166bn | The maximum theoretical refund pool |
| Refunded as of July 31, 2026 | About $100bn | Roughly 60% of the pool has moved |
| Importers affected | More than 330,000 | Claims processing is a volume problem, not a bespoke one |
| Shipments involved | More than 53m | Entry-level validation is the bottleneck |
| Abercrombie claim | About $100m | About 0.1% of the refunded total to date |
The processing has not been smooth. Earlier in the year the refund rollout produced large volumes of entries that failed automated validation, which delayed payment for importers whose filings were technically correct but did not match the agency’s data checks.
There is also unresolved litigation around the mechanics. The Court of International Trade has been weighing how refunds should be handled at scale, and the outcome for the class of 330,000 importers will shape whether claims like Abercrombie’s are paid in months or in years.
What the full-year guidance implies for the back half
Abercrombie has held full-year fiscal 2026 guidance at net sales growth of 3% to 5%, an operating margin of 12% to 12.5%, and earnings of $10.20 to $11.00 per diluted share. With first quarter earnings at $1.47 and second quarter guided to $1.80 to $2.00, the arithmetic loads most of the year into the back half.
That is normal for apparel retail, where holiday quarters carry the profit. It is also where the risk concentrates, because the company’s own assumption steps the effective tariff rate up to about 15% precisely when volumes peak.
A higher effective rate applied to a higher-volume quarter produces a larger absolute cost than the same rate applied to a summer quarter. If the second quarter carries roughly $20 million at an assumed 10% rate, a 15% rate against holiday volumes implies a materially larger figure.
Management has reduced its estimate of the full-year tariff drag on profitability to about 0.2 percentage points, down from an earlier estimate of around 0.7 percentage points, after the Supreme Court ruling removed one layer of duties. That revision is the single largest reason the full-year earnings range survived the first quarter unchanged.
What would force a guidance change
Three triggers would put the full-year range in play. A realized second half effective rate above 15%, a third consecutive quarter of EMEA decline, or a Hollister comparable sales figure that turns clearly negative in the Americas.
Any one of those on its own is probably absorbable inside a range that spans 80 cents of earnings per share. Two together would likely force a narrowing to the low end, and three would force a cut.
What to watch in the release and on the call
The headline revenue and earnings figures will move the stock in the first minutes, but the durable information sits further down the release and in the question-and-answer session.
Five specific disclosures worth finding
- The realized effective tariff rate for the quarter, if disclosed, against the assumed 10%. This is the cleanest read on whether the second half assumption is conservative or optimistic.
- Any change in the treatment of the roughly $100 million refund claim. A shift from excluded to recognized would be a material earnings event on its own.
- EMEA net sales and comparable sales, split from the total. The model expectation of about 4% growth requires a genuine inflection from a 10% decline.
- Hollister comparable sales by region. A flat total that hides a negative Americas number is a worse outcome than a modestly negative total driven by EMEA.
- Average unit retail and promotional commentary. Management has framed pricing discipline as the offset to tariff cost, so any softening in that language is significant.
Abercrombie shares had risen about 37.8% over the three months into the pre-earnings period, and the stock has traded at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of roughly 9.57 times against an industry average near 13.15 times. A discounted multiple after a strong run implies the market is pricing in earnings risk rather than demand risk.
On surprise history, the company has averaged an earnings beat of about 8.1% across the trailing four quarters, and beat by about 16.7% in the most recent quarter. Zacks has carried a Rank of 3 (Hold) with an Earnings ESP of 0.00% into the print, which is a neutral statistical setup rather than a directional one.
Retail earnings in this cycle have repeatedly turned on the tariff line rather than the sales line, a pattern visible in the Estée Lauder quarter and its roughly $100 million tariff bill earlier this month.
What it means for shoppers and for sellers
For shoppers, the practical question is whether refunded duties show up as lower prices. The evidence so far is mixed and depends entirely on the retailer’s competitive position.
Walmart made the pass-through explicit and visible. Most specialty apparel retailers have not, and Abercrombie has consistently framed average unit retail growth as a goal rather than a concession, which points toward margin repair rather than price cuts.
The refund pipeline is not restricted to large retailers. Any importer of record who paid duties under the invalidated program has a claim, though the practical barrier is having clean entry data that survives the agency’s automated validation.
Smaller sellers face a second problem that large retailers do not. A $100 million claim justifies dedicated customs counsel; a $40,000 claim often does not, which means the smallest importers are the least likely to recover what they paid.
The practical route for a smaller importer runs through the customs broker who filed the original entries. Brokers hold the entry summaries and the duty payment records that any claim depends on, and reconstructing that data after the fact is the step that most often stalls a claim.
Marketplace sellers who imported through a third-party logistics provider face an extra complication. Where the provider was named as importer of record, the refund right generally sits with the provider rather than with the seller who bore the cost commercially.
The tariff environment has not settled. A separate Section 232 action on unmanned aircraft systems takes effect on September 3, the Commerce Department’s comment window on 14 proposed derivative product inclusions closes on August 27, and Dollar General reports the same day with its own refund claim outside guidance.
For an apparel importer, the immediate exposure is to country-level actions rather than to product-level Section 232 inclusions. That does not make the calendar irrelevant, because each new program changes the blended rate that management has to forecast.
Customs process changes matter too, even when the duty rate does not move. US Customs and Border Protection is due to launch a new electronic informal entry process for mail shipments on September 22, part of a broader tightening that followed the closure of the de minimis exemption for low-value parcels.
For a retailer of Abercrombie’s size that is a compliance cost rather than a duty cost, because bulk apparel imports move as formal entries. For the direct-from-Asia sellers competing on the same category pages, it is closer to an existential change in unit economics.
The bottom line ahead of August 26
Consensus asks Abercrombie for about $1.24 billion in sales and $1.90 in earnings per share, a combination that accepts a roughly 18% profit decline as the cost of doing business in the current tariff regime. Guidance already contains the roughly $20 million tariff line, so the sales figure is not where the surprise is likely to come from.
The two live variables are EMEA and the refund. A genuine EMEA inflection would validate the full-year operating margin target of 12% to 12.5%, and any movement on the roughly $100 million refund claim would land outside the guided range entirely.
The setup statistically is neutral. Abercrombie has averaged an earnings beat of about 8.1% over the trailing four quarters and beat by about 16.7% last quarter, but it carries an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank of 3 (Hold) into this print, which is a combination that argues against a strong directional call in either direction.
What is not neutral is the valuation. A forward multiple near 9.57 times against an industry average around 13.15 times, after a share price gain of roughly 37.8% over three months, says the market has already discounted an earnings decline it expects to be temporary.
Everything else is arithmetic that both the company and the street have already published. The August 26 release is a test of assumptions, not of demand.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly does Abercrombie report second quarter fiscal 2026 results?
Wednesday, August 26, 2026, before the US market opens. The company has said the results presentation will be posted at approximately 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time with the press release shortly after, and the conference call begins at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
What are analysts expecting for revenue and earnings?
The Zacks consensus estimate is about $1.24 billion in net sales, roughly 2.8% above the year-ago quarter, and $1.90 in earnings per diluted share, which would be a decline of about 18.1% year over year. Company guidance was net sales growth of 2% to 4% and earnings of $1.80 to $2.00 per diluted share.
How much is the tariff cost in the quarter?
Abercrombie guided to an operating margin of about 10% for the second quarter including roughly $20 million of tariff-related impacts. That figure was built on an assumed effective tariff rate of about 10% for the quarter, stepping to about 15% in the second half of the fiscal year.
What is the $100 million refund Abercrombie has applied for?
Following the Supreme Court ruling of February 20, 2026, which held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize tariffs of indefinite scope, importers who paid duties under that program became eligible to claim refunds. Abercrombie has applied for roughly $100 million and has said it did not include the amount in its outlook.
Why is EMEA the weak region?
EMEA net sales fell about 10% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Management attributed part of the shortfall to Middle East conflict disruption, which it said reduced total company sales growth by more than 50 basis points versus its prior outlook, with the impact weighted toward the Hollister brands.
How are Abercrombie and Hollister performing differently?
In the first quarter the Abercrombie brands grew net sales about 3% while the Hollister brands were flat against a record prior-year comparison, with comparable sales down about 2%. Hollister carries more exposure to the softer EMEA demand environment.
Has Abercrombie changed its full-year guidance?
No. After the first quarter the company maintained full-year fiscal 2026 net sales growth of 3% to 5%, an operating margin of 12% to 12.5%, and earnings of $10.20 to $11.00 per diluted share. It also reduced its estimate of the full-year tariff drag on profitability to about 0.2 percentage points from around 0.7 percentage points.
Which other retailers report the same week?
Kohl’s is scheduled for August 26, the same day as Abercrombie. Burlington Stores reports on August 27 before market open with a call at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and Ulta Beauty is scheduled for August 27 after the close.
Will tariff refunds make clothes cheaper?
Not automatically. Walmart made its $2.9 billion refund visible by funding price rollbacks, but most specialty apparel retailers have used refunds and tariff relief to repair margin rather than to cut prices. Abercrombie has consistently guided to modest average unit retail growth, which points away from broad price reductions.