Marciano Brothers Selling Shares in Guess
Paul and Maurice Marciano, majority shareholders of their family-founded apparel and retail company Guess? Inc., announced on June 21 they would each sell up to 1 million shares of company stock in open-market transactions.
The sale, which will conclude March 31, 2005, is part of the Marcianos’ ongoing asset-diversification program.
The brothers, who are co-chief executives and co-chairmen, own about 65 percent of the Los Angeles company’s stock, which recently traded at about $16.70 a share, close to the stock’s 52-week high of $19.58 on April 5.
The company, which had a troublesome 2002 with an $11.3 million net loss on $544 million in revenues, has seen a turnaround.
Same-store sales are up, and profit is back on the ledger. For the first quarter, which ended March 27, net earnings were $800,000 on $153.3 million in revenues, compared with a net loss of $5.8 million on $139.6 million in revenues for the same period in 2003.
At the time the brothers adopted the diversification plan, Paul Marciano owned 12.4 million shares, or 28.1 percent of the company, and Maurice Marciano owned 16.2 million shares, or 36.8 percent of the company. Guess is a young contemporary apparel collection that has 264 retail stores in the United States and Canada.
Calls to the company were not returned.
In late 2002, a third brother, Armand Marciano, put his 14.9 percent of the company up for sale. One year later, Armand joined forces with Allen Schwartz to purchase young contemporary sportswear line A.B.S. by Allen Schwartz from The Warnaco Group Inc. —Deborah Belgum
