Tapestry's First FY2027 Guide, Not Its Fourth Quarter, Is Thursday's Real Test

by Leah Avraham · August 13, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

Tapestry, the owner of Coach and Kate Spade, is due to report fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter and full-year results before Thursday's open, with a conference call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, per the company's 30 July announcement. Its fiscal year ends in late June, not in December, so Thursday closes fiscal 2026 and opens fiscal 2027. The more consequential disclosure will be Tapestry's first formal outlook for fiscal 2027, from a company that has raised full-year guidance in each of its past three quarterly reports.

The arithmetic explains why. In its third-quarter release on 7 May, Tapestry guided to full-year fiscal 2026 revenue "in the area of $7.95 billion" and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share "in the area of $6.95." The first three quarters produced net sales of $1,704.6 million, $2,502.4 million and $1,920.6 million: $6.13 billion in total, leaving an implied fourth quarter of about $1.82 billion. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.38, $2.69 and $1.66 sums to $5.73, implying about $1.22. Both implied figures are this publication's own subtraction from a rounded company outlook — not guidance for the quarter, and not analyst consensus.

The rounding matters. A guide phrased as "in the area of $6.95" plausibly spans a nickel either way, putting the implied quarter anywhere from roughly $1.17 to $1.27 — a band that comfortably contains the $1.25 in adjusted EPS analysts expect, up from $1.04 on the same adjusted basis a year earlier, per Yahoo Finance's consensus summary. The gap to consensus sits inside that rounding error and is no signal of a shortfall. The revenue line needs its own asterisk: the year-ago quarter's $1,723.2 million included $45.5 million from Stuart Weitzman, sold on 4 August 2025, so the comparison is not like-for-like.

The raises are the story of the fiscal year, all of them non-GAAP. Guiding fiscal 2026 on 14 August 2025, Tapestry pointed to revenue approaching $7.2 billion and EPS of $5.30 to $5.45, a range embedding roughly 230 basis points of tariff and duty headwind. By November that was about $7.3 billion and $5.45 to $5.60; by February, over $7.75 billion and $6.40 to $6.45; by May, $7.95 billion and $6.95 — some $750 million of revenue and $1.50 to $1.65 of EPS added across three consecutive raises.

The third quarter showed why. Net sales rose 21% as reported and 19% in constant currency, Coach contributing $1,701.0 million, up 31% reported and 29% in constant currency. Gross margin reached 76.9%, up 80 basis points and identical on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis; operating margin was 22.3% GAAP and 22.4% non-GAAP, the latter up 490 basis points. GAAP diluted EPS was $1.65 and non-GAAP $1.66. On the pro forma constant-currency basis Tapestry uses to strip out Stuart Weitzman, Greater China grew 55%, Europe 21% and North America 20%, while Japan fell 10%.

Kate Spade is the exception. Reported net sales fell 8% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, 14% in the second and 10% in the third, to $219.6 million, after a 13% decline in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. On the third-quarter call, chief executive Joanne Crevoiserat said, "We welcomed 400,000 new customers to kate spade in the quarter," and added that "The leading indicators tell us that we're moving in the right direction." At its investor day on 10 September 2025, Tapestry said the brand would return to profitable topline growth in fiscal 2027 and reach mid-single-digit revenue growth with a high-single-digit operating margin in fiscal 2028.

That framework makes Thursday's guidance awkward to set. Amplify calls for mid-single-digit annual revenue growth, low-double-digit EPS growth in fiscal 2027 and 2028, and operating margin above 22% by fiscal 2028. But May's guidance already puts fiscal 2026 operating margin at approximately 23%, some 300 basis points above the prior year, on roughly 14% reported revenue growth — meeting the fiscal 2028 margin target two years early. Applied literally to a $6.95 base, low-double-digit growth implies fiscal 2027 EPS around $7.65 to $7.85, again this publication's arithmetic, and a mid-single-digit revenue guide would mark a sharp deceleration.

Crevoiserat has framed the long-term algorithm as a floor, not a forecast, describing the target on the May call as "mid-single-digit revenue growth as a floor." Whether Thursday's guide sits at that floor or above it is the number most likely to drive the reaction. Todd Kahn, Coach's chief executive and brand president, told analysts on the same call that Coach is approaching $1 billion in annual marketing spend, a level he said few in the industry can match.

Tariffs are the other variable to be re-based. Chief financial officer Scott Roe told analysts in May that "Tariffs negatively impacted gross margin by approximately 180 basis points overall," and that "We have not implemented any price increases in direct response to tariffs." How much annualises into fiscal 2027, and whether the pricing stance changes, will shape the margin bridge on the call.

The stock arrives at the print in retreat. US markets are closed ahead of Thursday's release; in Wednesday's session, the last completed one, Tapestry closed at $153.74, down 4.24%, after a 2.57% fall on Tuesday from Monday's close of $164.78, per StockAnalysis price history. That leaves the shares about 7% below Monday's close, which was within a few cents of the top of a 52-week range of $92.62 to $164.80. Market capitalisation is near $31.1 billion.

As of FactSet's Earnings Insight update on 7 August, 88% of S&P 500 companies had reported second-quarter results, with blended earnings growth of 50.4% and blended revenue growth of 15.0%, and 86% had beaten EPS estimates against a five-year average of 78%. The aggregate 29.2% earnings surprise is narrower than it looks: FactSet attributes most of it to outsized gains at Alphabet and Amazon, and puts the figure at 10.8% excluding those two. Separately, Tapestry expects to repurchase approximately $1.3 billion of stock in fiscal 2026, within a plan to return $4 billion to shareholders through fiscal 2028. The dividend runs at $0.40 a quarter, $1.60 for fiscal 2026.