When Matt Baer stepped in as chief executive officer of Stitch Fix Inc., there was a lot of turnaround work to do at the styling service — a pioneer in personalization that was not able to take advantage of its tech-forward positioning.

Baer’s methodical approach to sharpen the business and give clients more flexibility in how they shop has paid off nicely so far. Revenues for the fiscal year ended Aug. 1 bounced back 6.4 percent to $1.35 billion — returning the top line to growth a year ahead of schedule.

But now, the CEO is going to have to prove his turnaround can press on even with an outlook for the current fiscal year that predicts outright sales declines or, at the very least, a much slower growth rate.

Stitch Fix forecast that revenues this year would come in at $1.31 billion to $1.36 billion, a range running from a decline of 2.8 percent to a gain of 0.9 percent.

Wall Street’s reaction was immediate and intense as shareholders traded its stock down 17.4 percent to $2.33 in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

The company cited two primary factors that would drag down fix volume in the first quarter, including a timing change that pulled some fixes back into the fourth quarter as well as “an unintended change made to the post-checkout offer flow in August that limited the number of clients eligible to request another Fix, which has been corrected.”

“Those two factors are time bound and they are behind us,” Baer told WWD.

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