UPDATE 2-Christopher & Banks Q1 profit beats Street

* Q1 EPS $0.18 vs est EPS $0.12

* Q1 rev at $126.2 mln vs est $128 mln

* Q1 same-store sales rose 5 pct

* Says sees tough sales comparisons in H2 (Adds conference call and other details)

June 30 (Reuters) - Christopher & Banks Corp (CBK.N) posted a quarterly profit that beat Wall Street estimates as higher margins, driven partly by increased full price selling, helped the women's apparel retailer.

On a conference call with analysts, CFO Rodney Carter said the company sees second-quarter margin growing by a couple of hundred basis points, helped mainly by leveraging of buying and occupancy expenses.

For the second quarter, the company sees same-stores sales growth of about 5 percent or slightly higher.

However, the company would witness tough sales comparisons in the second half of the fiscal year, Carter added.

The company witnessed a decline in traffic trend in the first quarter but it achieved improvement in conversion rates as customers continued to respond favorably to its evolving merchandise assortment.

For the first quarter ended May 29, the company said net income was $6.3 million, or 18 cents a share, compared with net income of $1.7 million, or 5 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue for the company, whose clients are mainly women in their forties and above, rose 5 percent to $126.2 million.

Analysts on average expected earnings of 12 cents per share on revenue of $128 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Same-store sales rose 5 percent and gross margin rose to 42.3 percent.

"The increase (in same-store sales) was driven mainly by improvement in transaction value combined with the slight increase in the number of transactions per average store," CFO Carter said.

Cost of merchandise buying and occupancy expense fell to 57.7 percent of net sales compared with 62.7 percent of net sales a year ago.

Shares of the Plymouth, Minnesota-based company closed at $6.19 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Shobhana Chadha in Bangalore; Editing by Jarshad Kakkrakandy)