After the party comes the cleanup. One week ago, RH chairman and CEO Gary Friedman was debuting the company’s Paris gallery to a celebrity-studded crowd. Yesterday, he faced a less glamorous task: discussing RH’s second-quarter earnings with Wall Street analysts. The numbers were decent, but you could tell Friedman’s heart was still in the City of Light—the word Paris appeared 46 times in a transcript of the call.

RH had a reasonable quarter, showing incremental improvement across much of its business. Revenue increased 8.4 percent to $899 million, $51.7 million of which fell to the bottom line as profit. The company’s free cash flow—which had gone negative for a quarter last year—ticked up to $81 million, and its operating margins are trending upward. These were not blockbuster res

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