Lululemon Reports Thursday With No Adjusted EPS to Hide Behind, and a Consensus That Sits Inside Its Own Guidance Range

by Leah Avraham · August 31, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

Lululemon athletica has not yet reported its fiscal second quarter. The company said on August 20 that results will be released on Thursday, September 3, with a call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. Everything below is drawn from documents already published: the first-quarter release filed in June, the year-ago second-quarter release, the June call transcript, and third-party previews carrying compiled estimates.

Start with the feature that makes this report unusual on a desk that spends most of its time reconciling two versions of the same earnings number. Lululemon does not publish an adjusted or non-GAAP earnings per share. Its first-quarter fiscal 2026 release presents diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis and stops there, as did its year-ago second-quarter release. The company does use non-GAAP presentation for revenue - constant-dollar growth and comparable sales - but not for the bottom line. The guide, the compiled estimate and the printed result will all sit on one basis.

The guide is specific. In the first-quarter release the company wrote: "For the second quarter of 2026, the Company expects net revenue to be in the range of $2.450 billion to $2.475 billion, representing a decline of 3% to 2%. Diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $1.76 to $1.81 for the quarter." For the year it wrote: "For 2026, the Company now expects net revenue to be in the range of $11.000 billion to $11.150 billion, representing a decline of 1% to 0%. Diluted earnings per share are now expected to be in the range of $10.95 to $11.15 for the year."

The year-ago comparison is documented in the company's own filing for the quarter ended August 3, 2025: net revenue of $2.5 billion, up 7% and up 6% on a constant-dollar basis, gross margin of 58.5%, operating margin of 20.7%, income from operations of $523.8 million, and GAAP diluted earnings per share of $3.10. No adjusted figure was presented there either.

A consensus that lands inside the guide

A Zacks-sourced preview published August 27 and accessed August 31 puts the consensus at $1.79 a share, "suggesting a 42.3% decline from the year-ago quarter's actual." A Kiplinger week-ahead calendar accessed the same day carries $1.80 and a 41.9% decline; Kiplinger states that its earnings estimate data is "provided by Refinitiv, an LSEG business, via Yahoo! Finance, and S&P Global Market Intelligence via Briefing.com." Neither preview states whether its estimate is a GAAP or a non-GAAP figure, which in this case is a smaller problem than usual because lululemon publishes only one. Both sit inside the $1.76 to $1.81 band the company published on June 4.

That matters for how any beat or miss on Thursday should be read. When a compiled consensus sits inside a company's own guidance range, the estimate is largely a restatement of the guide rather than an independent view of the quarter. A print of $1.82 would clear both; $1.79 would match the consensus and sit mid-range. Neither tells you much about demand on its own. The information will be in the revenue mix, the margin bridge and the revised full-year range.

There is one divergence in the compiled figures that readers should see rather than have smoothed away. The same Zacks-sourced preview states: "The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal second-quarter revenues is pegged at $2.5 billion, indicating 2.3% growth from the year-ago quarter's reported figure." Two paragraphs of the same article state the company's guidance as "revenues of $2.45-$2.475 billion, suggesting a 2-3% fall." A rounded $2.5 billion is arithmetically compatible with a $2.475 billion top-of-range figure; a described 2.3% year-on-year increase is not compatible with a company range the same article describes as a fall. The Kiplinger calendar, drawing on different compilers, carries the same rounded "$2.5 billion" but describes it as "unchanged from the year-ago period" - a third stated direction for the same rounded figure. We report the divergence rather than resolve it. Anyone quoting a revenue consensus here should name the compiler and the date, and check the stated direction against the company's own range.

Where the earnings decline comes from

The decline lululemon has guided to is not a demand collapse. On revenue the company guides to a 3% to 2% fall. On earnings it guides to roughly 42% less than the year-ago quarter. The gap between those two rates is margin. On its June call management said gross margin was expected to decrease approximately 410 basis points against the second quarter of 2025, and put second-quarter operating margin at approximately 11.6% versus 20.7% a year earlier. Roughly nine points of operating margin, on a revenue base of about $2.46 billion, is where the earnings go.

Management attributed part of that to tariffs and quantified it on the same call. Tariffs carried a gross negative impact of 280 basis points in the first quarter. For the second quarter the company said it expected a gross negative impact of 150 basis points with offsets of approximately 100 basis points. On the rate assumption, management said guidance "now assumes an incremental rate of 10% for Q2. This is down from our prior assumption of approximately 20%," and said of the second half that "we continue to assume a 20% incremental rate." For the full year the company put the gross tariff impact at 30 basis points and said it expected to offset almost all of it.

That back-half assumption is the item to watch on Thursday. A 20% incremental rate is baked into the second half of a full-year range that already implies a steep year-on-year earnings decline: $10.95 to $11.15 against $13.26 in fiscal 2025, per figures given on the June call. If the rate assumption changes in either direction, the full-year range should move with it, and the company's own revision is a far better guide to what happened than any recompiled estimate.

The first quarter is on the record: net revenue of $2,471.6 million, up 4% and up 2% in constant dollars; gross margin of 54.2%; operating margin of 11.2%; and GAAP diluted EPS of $1.69, for the quarter ended May 3, 2026. The full-year revenue outlook was cut with that report to flat-to-down-1% from a prior 2% to 4% growth assumption, per a July 27 preview.

One more comparison is worth flagging before the print. That July 27 preview put the full-year consensus at $10.94 a share against fiscal 2025's $13.26, without naming the compiler that produced it - a gap readers should hold against the figure. The company's own full-year floor is $10.95. A compiled full-year estimate sitting one cent below a company's own guidance floor is not a forecast of a miss so much as a signal that the compiled number and the guided number have converged to the point of being the same number. Whatever lululemon says on Thursday about the balance of the year will be the new information; the estimate will follow it, not the other way around.

Nothing here is a view on lululemon shares, and no second-quarter result is stated because the company has not reported one. On Thursday this desk will compare the printed GAAP diluted EPS with the $1.76 to $1.81 published in June, and the revised full-year range with the $10.95 to $11.15 published alongside it.