And for the full year, the company now expects to achieve earnings per share of between $2.39 and $2.41. The earlier projection had been $2.51 to $2.56.

"We anticipated a challenging fourth quarter," Peter Bonepath, the company's CEO, told analysts. "But the environment proved to be more difficult than expected. Most challenging was a higher level of promotions experienced by our retail customers than we had expected.

"Given the environment, we also experienced a higher level of off-price shipments," Bonepath continued, "and we received a lower recovery rate on those shipments than we have historically recovered. But we feel that our wholesale inventory levels and our inventories in the retail channel are in line with expectations"

"Our balance sheet remains quite strong," Wesley Card, Jones Apparel's COO/CFO told analysts. "Full-year operating cash flow and our debt to total capitalization ratio are in line with previous guidance. We ended the year with $69 million of short-term borrowings and $331 million of outstanding letters of credit against our $1.5 billion committed bank lines."

As far as FY 2005, "we're revising our range of projected earnings per share from $3.00 to $3.10, to a range of $2.75 to $2.90," Card told analysts. "This forecast reflects our cautious outlook, and it also includes the projected results of Barneys New York along with the incremental interest expense associated with the $750 million senior note financing completed in November 2004. We also forecast total revenues in a range of $5.3 billion to $5.4 billion.

Jones Apparel acquired Barneys New York in a deal that closed in the middle of last month. The transaction was valued at just over $397 million, which included $19 per common share to Barney's stockholders totaling $291.3 million.

Besides Jones New York and Barney's New York, the company designs, markets and retails such brands as Anne Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, Evan Picone, Nine West, East Spirit and Bandolino, among others. It also markets Polo Jeans under license from Polo Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger and Givenchy jewelry under license from those companies.