The Harvey Norman Holdings Limited (ASX: HVN) share price is having a strong session.
At the time of writing, the retail giant's shares are up over 4% to $3.39.
Why is the Harvey Norman share price pushing higher?
There appear to be a couple of catalysts for the rise in the Harvey Norman share price today.
The first is the release of inflation data this morning, which revealed a softer-than-expected reading.
This appears to have sparked hopes that the RBA won't have to raise rates as much as feared. Though, the jury is still out on that.
In addition, this morning the company released its profit guidance for FY 2023. It said:
Unaudited, preliminary, draft accounts for the 11 months ending 31 May 2023 indicate that profit before tax and non-controlling interests excluding net property revaluations and AASB16 Leases for the consolidated entity, for the year ending 30 June 2023, is expected to be in the range of up or down 5% of $670m.
This would mean a profit before tax (excluding net property revaluations and AASB16 Leases) in the range of $636.5 million to $703 million.
How does this compare to last year?
As a reminder, in FY 2022, Harvey Norman reported a profit before tax (excluding AASB16 net impact and net property revaluations) of $942.79 million. As a result, we are looking at the retailer delivering a profit before tax of approximately 25% to 32% lower year over year.
However, judging by the performance of the Harvey Norman share price today, some investors appear to have been expecting an even greater decline.
It is worth noting that Goldman Sachs was expecting a profit before tax of $657 million, which is broadly in the middle of this guidance range.
Management also advised that its "net property revaluations for the 12 months ended 30 June 2023 are expected to be approximately $119m."
