Sport Chalet Inc. has proposed a plan to transfer ownership of the company from its founder and majority shareholder Norbert Olberz to its current management team, Craig Levra, chairman and CEO and Howard Kaminsky, CFO. The proposed recapitalization plan would also retain voting rights for the company’s current shareholders. Olberz, who is 80 years old, founded the company in 1958 with a single shop in La Canada and owns about 65 percent of the company’s stock. Olberz, who still sits on the company’s board of directors, in 1998 gave nearly 300,000 of his own shares in Sport Chalet to employees who had been with the company for more than 10 years and to managers with at least a year of service to celebrate the company’s most profitable year. In making the announcement, Sport Chalet also reported its results for the most recent quarter and fiscal 2005. Sport Chalet reported same store sales increased 4.4 percent for the fourth quarter ended March 31 and 5.7 percent for the year. The retailer reported net income more than doubled to $721,726 or $0.10 per diluted share for the three month period, from $330,142 or $0.05 per share. Revenues for the same period rose to $79.2 million, from $69.4 million. For the full year, Sport Chalet reported net income of $6.2 million or $0.88 per diluted share, compared to $4.6 million or $0.66 per share in the last fiscal year. Revenues in fiscal 2005 rose to $309.1 million from $264.2 million.
