JD Sports Fashion PLC (LSE:JD.) shares rose over 3% on Wednesday as the retailer announced a £100 million share buyback to jazz up a second quarter update that showed slower sales, but where the full-year profit outlook remained laced up tight.
Group like-for-like sales for the sporty fashion retailer fell 3% in the 13 weeks to 2 August, with organic growth of 2.2%, compared to the first quarter that saw LFL sales down 2% and organic sales grow 3.1%.
For the first half of the FTSE 100 group's fiscal year, this meant LFL sales were down 2.5% while organic sales rose 2.6%.
Analysts said this was better than expected.
Pockets of encouragement came from North America, where LFL sales fell only 2.3% in Q2 compared to 5.5% in Q1, and Asia Pacific, which returned to LFL growth of 0.3% from the initial 5.5% decline.
The UK and Europe showed softer trends, with LFL sales down 6.1% and 1.1% respectively, compared with 0.4% and 0.7% declines in Q1.
CEO Regis Schultz said North America's improved performance was helped by several product launches being pushed from the first into the second quarter, along with stronger sales trends in apparel and online.
"In both Europe and the UK, we were annualising tough comparators from the Euros football tournament last year, but still saw a good underlying performance in apparel and from newer footwear lines," he said.
Margins were the source of more pride, it seemed, supported by "controlled price investments", particularly online, with management stressing a cautious approach to discounting to protect profitability.
"Across our regions and fascias, in general we see a resilient consumer, albeit very selective on their purchases. We therefore remain cautious on the trading environment going into H2," said Schultz.
However, for now, full-year profit before tax and adjusting items are expected to be in line with current market expectations, though he said this is "before any indirect impact of US tariffs which we continue to work through".
The shares rose 3.4% to 97.18p, their highest since the start of the year.
** Update: Adds share price details **