NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Limited Brands has clearly found greater success in undressing consumers with its fashionable Victoria's Secret lingerie than in keeping them dressed in its Express and Limited clothing brands.

So could the retailer toss its struggling apparel businesses altogether and focus entirely on its profitable lingerie, skin care and perfume brands?

Afterall, sales at Express and Limited have been hurting for some time from a string of fashion flops while Victoria's Secret is the company's most meaningful earnings contributor, accounting for more than 90 percent of Limited's total annual profit.

Some industry analysts speculate that Limited may indeed be thinking along those lines.

Columbus, Ohio-based Limited Brands (Research) last month announced that the company was reorganizing itself into three distinct business units to focus on lingerie, beauty/personal care products and apparel.

The specialty retailer also named three presidents to lead the groups. Limited executives said the move was needed to speed up growth plans.

"We are poised for accelerated future growth and we need the depth and breadth of leadership to achieve it," Limited's CEO Leslie Wexner, said in a statement.

In a recent note to clients, Lazard Freres analyst Todd Slater called the divisional restructurings "largely a formality."

"As these distinctions seem to have already been made, [the restructuring] news appears to advance Limited's well-telegraphed goal to invest in growth brands or markets and divest away from underperforming assets," Slater wrote.

Specifically, Slater thinks continued weak sales at Express and The Limited put those two units in the danger zone. In December, Limited posted sales at its stores open at least a year up two percent, led by an 11 percent gain at Bath & Body Works and a 4 percent gain at Victoria's Secret stores.

At the same time, same-store sales for the month at Express tanked 18 percent and declined 3 percent at The Limited.

"With CEO Les Wexner's official focus now largely on the company's lingerie and beauty/personal care franchises, we believe the apparel segment will be gone by 2006, short of a miraculous recovery," Slater said.

For its part, Limited declined to comment on Slater's report, saying that the company does not respond to speculation.

However, Limited spokesman Anthony Hebron drew attention to CEO Wexner's comments to investors and analysts at the company's annual meeting last October in which he talked about the company's "significant strides in apparel."

"Express is well into the process of a substantial transformation and is proving itself as a significant dual-gender, high-quality apparel brand," Wexner said at the time. "While much hard work needs to be done, we believe the opportunities for growth across our brands are significant."

Mark Montagna, retail analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, said he wouldn't be surprised if the company jettisons its low-performing units.

"Limited is a company with very deep pockets, with over $2 billion in cash. So its been able to withstand the poor performance of Express and Limited thus far," he added. "But why would it want to hang on to these units when they're continuing to be a drag on both sales and profits?"

Limited has a history of divestitures, including Lane Bryant in 2001 and Lerner New York in 2002. But it's also known for the strong brands it has spun off. Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works divisions of Limited's Intimate Brands division were both once units of The Limited.

"It's widely expected that Limited will get rid of the apparel business and just keep beauty and lingerie," Montagna said, who has a "hold" rating on the stock. "Maybe this new layer of management that they just announced is being put into place to craft a spinoff of the apparel units."