Morris Goldfarb
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital
Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results. With me today on the call are Sammy Aaron, our Vice Chairman and President; Wayne Miller, our Chief Operating Officer; Neal Nackman, our Chief Financial Officer; and Jeff Goldfarb, our Executive Vice President and Director of Strategic Planning.
In addition to reviewing our results, we will discuss our view of the market, detail key strategic initiatives underway and provide our fiscal 2018 guidance.
Let's start with financial highlights from the fourth quarter and full year. Total sales for the full year were $2.4 billion, up 2% from last year. Our fourth quarter sales were up 14% to $603 million from $527 million last year.
Achieving revenue growth this past year has been challenging across the industry. A second consecutive year of soft retail traffic and unseasonably warm weather, combined with accelerated consumer migration to e-commerce, all caused pressure on traditional retailers this past year. Our own retail businesses had negative comp sales, including during the holiday season. In wholesale, our continued growth and success was in all categories other than coats.
Our GAAP net income for the full year was $52 million or $1.10 per diluted share compared to $114 million or $2.46 per diluted share last year. Our non-GAAP net income for the full year was $57 million or $1.42 per diluted share compared to $114 million or $2.44 per diluted share last year.
Our fourth quarter GAAP net loss was $0.42 per share compared to net income of $0.17 per diluted share last year. Our fourth quarter non-GAAP loss was $0.16 compared to a net income of $0.17 per diluted share last year. Neal will provide the detail with respect to the specific acquisition-related items and the retail asset impairment charge that affected our GAAP results, both for fourth quarter and full year.
Our full year results were also negatively impacted by $57 million of losses in our Wilsons and Bass retail businesses compared to $2 million of losses in the prior year.
I want to share some details with respect to our overall strategies to address the evolving market environment. The losses we're incurring in our Wilsons and Bass retail businesses are unacceptable, and as I said in our previous earnings call, we're taking decisive action. First, we're closing nearly 1/3 of our Wilsons and Bass stores. Combined through lease expirations, we expect to close 60 Wilsons and Bass stores by the end of this fiscal year and then another 55 in the following year. 1/3 of this year's closing will occur before the end of the fiscal first quarter.
Second, we're cutting costs. We're integrating Wilsons, Bass and the Donna Karan back-end retail infrastructure on a shared and efficient platform. In addition, we're looking at other ways to run the retail operations more efficiently. We've already achieved annual run rate savings of $4 million and expect to reach $12 million in annual run rate savings by the beginning of the third quarter this year.
Third, we're making product and merchandising changes to outerwear and accessories in our stores to improve our retail results.
Fourth, we're repurposing some of our existing stores to Karl Lagerfeld Paris and also expect to ultimately repurpose some stores to DKNY. We've experienced dramatically better results for the select Karl Lagerfeld Paris stores that have already been repurposed from either Bass or Wilsons.
To summarize, these actions are designed to reduce our risk and exposure in our own retail operations and to substantially improve the bottom line performance of our retail business.
Another key pillar of our overall strategy is to become the premier wholesale provider of women's apparel to retailers across the country. We continue to see success, and we now operate with 5 global power brands: DKNY, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld. These 5 brands, along with the rest of our portfolio, provide the basis for increased sales to brick-and-mortar as well as online. We anticipate growth in each of these brands over the next several years. The Donna Karan acquisition is an important part of this wholesale strategy as we build the DKNY and Donna Karan brands, both in the U.S. and around the world.
Our largest retail customers, the ones we expect to drive our growth along in the future, are some of the best retailers in the world. They have the scale, the capital and the ability to evolve and succeed in this new retailing paradigm of fewer brick-and-mortar and a greater online presence. We are positioned to be an important part of the continued success with these retailers. We now have 4 brands that can support a significant online presence: DKNY, Karl Lagerfeld, Vilebrequin and Bass. We believe that a direct online strategy is a potentially powerful opportunity for brand building and incremental growth.
The last part of our overall strategy relates to the DKNY and Donna Karan brands. As you may have seen, we announced this morning a long-term strategic alliance with Macy's to be the exclusive department store for the DKNY brand for women's apparel and accessories. This is a great opportunity not only for us but also for many of our DKNY licensees. The Donna Karan brand, in all categories, will be marketed to all other major better department stores. I'll have more to say about this strategy in a bit. We believe that becoming the premier wholesale provider of women's apparel and realizing the potential of the DKNY and Donna Karan brands will enable us to achieve annual net sales of $5 billion along with robust profits. I'm more confident than ever that we can realize these goals.
Now let me provide you some details on our business and results. Our outerwear business increased in the fourth quarter over last year; Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein was a strong performance. Other standout businesses in the fourth quarter in wholesale were Calvin Klein sportswear, performance and handbags, all with growth in the mid-teens over last year.
Tommy Hilfiger's strongest category was denim. Although Tommy sportswear began shipping a little later in January than we had planned, early indications for that initiative is strong. Eliza J and Vince Camuto dresses had another strong quarter, with shipments up by 35%. Eliza J remains the #1 dress brand at Nordstrom's. We are now shipping Karl Lagerfeld sportswear, dresses, suits, handbags and shoes. We are really just getting started with Lagerfeld. Lord & Taylor and The Bay are important retailer partners for the Lagerfeld brand. We believe Lagerfeld has an opportunity to become one of the most important brands in the portfolio for each of them.
In our own retail business, Wilsons had a comp decline of 14%, and Bass was down 8% for the year. At Wilsons, in addition to the steps I mentioned earlier, we are improving our mix with more of our national brands. At Bass, we are placing a bigger emphasis on our higher-margin apparel going forward as well as further refining our shoe assortment. In addition, our e-commerce platform for Bass really gained momentum this year with an increase of 35% over last year. We expect increases again this year and continue to invest additional resources in e-commerce area.
Our Vilebrequin business has been resilient, with comps worldwide up in the low single digits. We're pleased with the direction of the business.
Now I'd like to take a moment to talk about our strategy and outlook for DKNY and Donna Karan. These are 2 incredible brands that evoke that rare and valuable emotional connection with the consumer. We made a strategic decision to enter into a long-term exclusive partnership with Macy's for DKNY in the United States for certain categories, including women's sportswear, performance, denim, dresses, suits, slim, outerwear, handbags and shoes. G-III and Macy's have committed to reestablishing DKNY as a premier fashion and lifestyle brand in the United States. We know how to build big successful businesses with Macy's. The Donna Karan brand is another powerful strategic growth program for us. We've relaunched this brand to be priced above DKNY and to once again be the aspirational luxury brand that is known for, starting with the 7 easy pieces that made Donna famous: the perfect white shirt, the pant, the body suit, the sweater, the cold shoulder, the perfect jacket and the perfect coat. We expect Donna Karan to be adopted by a range of great department stores where we will also -- where we also have great relationships. We expect to ship approximately $30 million of DKNY and Donna Karan product at wholesale in the first half of the year and $145 million in the second half of the year. We took over this business less than 4 months ago on December 1, 2016. We are one of the few companies in our industry that could successfully relaunch 6 new categories for each of 2 brands and bring them to market in less than 4 months. Our new DKNY and Donna Karan collections are also launching in Europe and with key distribution partners around the world. We are working diligently to build our licensing base around 4 great partners: Estée Lauder, Hanes, Fossil and Luxottica.
With respect to brand marketing, we're enjoying a very successful intimates, hosiery and sleepwear campaign featuring Emily Ratajkowski, one of the premier models in today's fashion world. We plan to have many more exciting marketing campaigns ahead as we bring great new products to market.
I will now turn the call over to Neal for a closer review of our financial performance and outlook for next year. After Neal's financial review, I'll conclude with some comments as to why, despite the disruptive changes in consumer buying habits, we remain confident that G-III will continue to lead our industry, drive sustainable growth and create shareholder value. Neal?