BID TerminalOpen complete report
Research library Consumer

Back of Napkin

American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. AEO

Three-pass checkedFresh as companies report

American Eagle has submitted claims for $189.8M of tariff refunds after the Supreme Court struck the tariffs down, and has put none of it on the balance sheet.

That is 6.7% of the market value sitting in a footnote, and the argument underneath it is whether Aerie is now the company.

Key data

Price, Aug 28 close$16.87
Market value$2.8B
52-week range$12.60 to $28.46
Net cash, May 2$18.3M
Refund claims filed, unrecorded$189.8M

AEO · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$8$13$19$24$29 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jun '25Jan '26Aug '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Two brands and a website. American Eagle sells denim and casual clothing to teenagers and people in their twenties out of roughly 800 stores. Aerie sells intimates, loungewear and activewear, mostly to young women, out of 335 standalone stores plus 184 shops attached to American Eagle locations. There are 1,170 stores in total.

The moat is a brand that a specific age cohort agrees is acceptable to wear, which is the least durable asset in retail and the reason this category carries the multiple it does. Merchandise is sourced abroad, which is why a tariff ruling moves the numbers more than a good season does.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05The shape of the payoff
  6. 06Closing thoughts
  7. 07Methodology

Continue with AEO

Get the complete Back of Napkin free.

Choose this as your free complete report. No card required.

Read the complete report

More company research

View all research
The Home Depot, Inc. HDHome Depot has not had a quarter of positive customer transactions in over a year. Every comparable-sales figure it has reported since has been carried entirely by people spending more per visit. Back of Napkin Wingstop Inc. WINGWingstop's franchise machine is still opening a restaurant nearly every day while the customers inside its existing restaurants quietly thin out. Moat Dive Wingstop Inc. WINGWingstop's operating income grew 21% in the June quarter. Its average restaurant sold $219,000 less than it did a year earlier. Back of Napkin Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. BBWYou are paying about $374M, roughly seven times trailing earnings, for a mall retailer that sells children a stuffed animal they build themselves, and whose sales just went from growing 12% to shrinking 7%. Back of Napkin