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More of China's killer toys recalled -- will Target (TGT), RC2 (RCRC) and Jo-Ann Stores (JAS) feel the burn?

Posted Sep 27th 2007 12:15PM by Peter Cohan (RSS feed)
Filed under: Products and services, Marketing and advertising, Target Corp. (TGT)

The Associated Press reports that another batch of killer toys from China is being recalled. On Wednesday, toys and children's necklaces made in China were recalled, including five more items from the popular Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line, because they contain dangerous levels of lead.

Here are the details:

  • 23,500 more necklaces, bracelets and pendants imported by TOBY N.Y.C. of New York;
  • 850 children's Spinning Wheel Necklace necklaces, produced by Rhode Island Novelty of Cumberland, RI;
  • 350,000 Happy Giddy Gardening Tools and Children's Sunny Patch Chairs, imported by Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) of Minneapolis, MN;.
  • 200,000 Thomas and Friends Wood Railway Toys and 800 Britain's "Knights of the Sword" series toys, distributed by RC2 Corp. (NASDAQ: RCRC) of Oak Brook, IL
  • 16,000 children's toy rakes imported by Jo-Ann Stores Inc. (NYSE: JAS) of Hudson, OH.
  • 10,000 Floor Puppet Theaters produced by Guidecraft Inc., of Englewood, NJ.

Gallery: More toys recalled

Happy Giddy Gardening Tools recalledToby & Me jewelryKnights of the Sword toys recalledSpinning wheel necklace recalledKolcraft Play Yard recalled


Continue reading More of China's killer toys recalled -- will Target (TGT), RC2 (RCRC) and Jo-Ann Stores (JAS) feel the burn?

Jo-Ann Stores: Is this firm on the block? Maybe sew...

Posted Jun 5th 2007 1:13PM by Larry Schutts (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Rumors, Technical Analysis

As more people take up sewing for recreation, the fabric store is becoming an arts and crafts center. A Hudson, Ohio company has been on the cutting edge of the transformation.

Jo-Ann Stores Inc. (NYSE: JAS) is the nation's leading fabric retailer, offering a range of merchandise used in sewing, crafting and home decorating projects. Among its staple items are fabrics, notions, frames, paper crafting materials, artificial and dried flowers, home accents and finished seasonal goods. The company operates more than 940 stores, in 47 states.

Jo-Ann Stores made the news last week, on word it is the subject of serious acquisition interest. According to TheDeal.com, the firm would probably be taken private at a premium to its current share price. Bids were said to be due this month. Parties described as being involved declined comment.

Continue reading Jo-Ann Stores: Is this firm on the block? Maybe sew...

Jo-Ann Stores: So you like to sew ...

Posted Mar 16th 2007 2:55PM by Larry Schutts (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports


As sewing has made the transition from drudgery to hobby, so has the fabric store been transformed into an arts and crafts center. A Hudson, Ohio firm has been on the cutting edge of the metamorphosis.

Jo-Ann Stores Inc. (NYSE:JAS) is the nation's leading fabric retailer, offering a range of merchandise used in sewing, crafting and home decorating projects. Among its staple items are fabrics, notions, frames, paper crafting materials, artificial and dried flowers, home accents and finished seasonal goods. The company operates 627 Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft stores and 173 Jo-Ann superstores, in 47 states.

The firm pleased the Street earlier in the week, when it announced solid Q4 results and issued FY08 EPS guidance well above Wall Street views. Management expects positive same-store sales for FY08, as well as continued margin improvement. The JAS price popped through 30-day and 50-day moving average resistance on the news and has since been defining a bullish "flag" consolidation pattern. Stocks frequently exit flags moving in the same direction they were traveling when they entered them. In this case, that would be to the upside.

Brokers recommend the issue with three "holds". Analysts see a 75% growth rate, through the next year. The stock's Price to Sales ratio (0.34), Price to Book ratio (1.55), Price to Cash Flow ratio (13.71) and EPS Growth rate (169.23%) compare favorably with industry, sector and S&P 500 averages.

Institutional investors hold about 83% of the outstanding shares. The stock is one of those used to calculate the S&P 600 SmallCap Index. Over the past 52 weeks, it has traded between $11.95 and $26.95. A stop-loss of $21.35 looks good here.

Larry Schutts is a contributing editor for Theflyonthewall.com and the Vice-President of Stockwinners.com.

There were some market winners today: not everyone is crying tonight

Posted Mar 13th 2007 4:43PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: After the bell, Major movement, Earnings reports, Forecasts, Good news, Bad news, From the boards, Press releases, Products and services, Management, Industry, Competitive strategy, Kroger Co (KR), QUALCOMM Inc (QCOM)

Yes, it was definitely a tough day in the market today with the major indexes all getting hit pretty hard. As worries linger over problems in the subprime mortgage market traders pushed the indexes all down about 2% on the day.

The DOW closed down 242.66 points for a 1.97% fall, the NASDAQ fell 51.72 points as it gave back 2.15%, and the S&P saw a drop of 28.65 for a loss of 2.04%.

While the pain was pretty hard across the board, there were a couple of names that were shining in the market today.
  • Jo-Ann Stores (NYSE: JAS) saw their shares sky-rocket today following last night's fourth quarter 2007 earnings release. The company beat estimates of $0.98 by posting $1.05 per share. The company also announced that they expect to see profit for their fiscal 2008 year to be above Wall Street estimates. Shares of JAS were rewarded for the good news as shares were able to close out today's session up 12.4% to $25.71 after setting a new 52 week high earlier in the day at $26.95.
  • Kroger Company (NYSE: KR) was hot all through the day after reporting strong earnings this morning. The stock set a 52 week high earlier in the session of $27.03 and finished out the day up 2.1% at $26.29.
  • Dick's Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) was another stock setting a new high following their earnings this morning. The company put up a new 52 week high of $56.43 before closing out today's session up 1.0% to $54.44.
  • Qulacomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) saw their shares take off today after the company raised their earnings forecast today before the market opened. QCOM now expects to see earnings for their quarter ending April 1 to come in between 48 and 49 cents. Before today their forecast was between 42 and 44 cents. The reason for today's revision in forecast comes from better-than-expected sales of chipsets used in advanced wireless phones. In addition shareholders were pleased to hear that the company is lifting it's quarterly dividend to $0.14 from $0.12. The stock finished out today's session up 4.3% to $41.83.
On every day there are winners and losers in the market. Unfortunately today there turned out to be about a 4:1 ratio of losers to winners. But even on a day like today there will always be a couple of people that can smile at the dinner table and get a good nights sleep. For the rest of us... let's just hope that tomorrow proves to be a little less painful than today.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.

Jo-Ann Stores and Lowe's rock Black Friday, dollar stores don't

Posted Nov 27th 2006 1:38PM by Nick Perry (RSS feed)
Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Estee Lauder (EL), Best Buy (BBY), Black Friday, Gap Inc (GPS), Lowe's Cos (LOW)

The deals and general craziness of Black Friday have already been well-covered in this space, so I thought it might be interesting to turn your attention to the actual stock reactions. My intentions were simple enough (but aren't they always?): grab a list of retail stocks and calculate the returns from the close on Wednesday, November 22, through this morning. Sorting the list would give a quick (but early) overview of how the Street was reacting to the "day."

I have ample data manipulation tools at my disposal, so I figured this to be an easy task. What I didn't count on was not being able to find what I considered to be a satisfactory list of retail stocks. The lists I found were either too broad or too narrow. I wanted the usual suspects like Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT), and Gap (NYSE:GPS), while also picking up some of the smaller players like Bebe Stores (NASDAQ:BEBE) and Chico's FAS (NYSE:CHS). Additionally I wanted to capture some of the brands like Crocs (NASDAQ:CROX) and dELiA*s (NASDAQ:DLIA), while excluding consumer goods producers and fast food restaurants.

Unable to find a list that suited my (admittedly arbitrary) desires, I began to handpick names and compile a list of 72 stocks. The graph below shows the top and bottom performing stocks through noon today.



Blue Nile (NASDAQ:NILE), Pier One (NYSE:PIR), and Coldwater Creek (NASDAQ:CWTR) are the weakest stocks, while Lowe's (NYSE:LOW), American Eagle Outfitters (NASDAQ:AEOS), and Jo-Ann Stores (NYSE:JAS) are the strongest.

As you can infer from the graph, the bulk of the returns are flat to lower as two of the "best performing" stocks, Aeropostale (NYSE:ARO) and Limited Brands (NYSE:LTD), show a loss. In other words, buying just ahead of Black Friday doesn't seem like it would have been a good short-term trading strategy. Going forward though, I would expect to see some stocks distinguish themselves and separate from the pack. With my list now created (and saved!) it should be much easier to track. If there is interest in this, I can post periodic updates.

Nick Perry is an analyst with Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-93.7910,197.47
NASDAQ-17.882,149.02
S&P 500-11.271,087.24

Last updated: November 12, 2009: 07:42 PM

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