Retailer Macy's (NYSE: M) first fiscal quarter wasn't that bad, at least in terms of the analyst game. The company, which competes with mall colleagues such as J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) and Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), reported net income of 2 cents per diluted share from continuing operations. The denizens of Wall Street thought the company would lose 2 cents, so management came ahead in this regard by four pennies. Bravo!
However, does this news excite me? Not necessarily. Macy's needs a little help in its sales department. First, the overall top line declined almost 3%, coming in at $5.7 billion. Second, and perhaps even more telling, same-store sales were weak during the quarter, decreasing by 2.6%. And then there's the issue of cash flow. Operational cash flow from continuing operations was excellent compared with last year's quarter since $21 million was generated this time around as opposed to $370 million being used last time around. Nevertheless, when you take into account capital spending, no free cash flow was left over in the first quarter. And cash has been decreasing on the balance sheet. Oh, and gross margin went down, too.
I wasn't too taken by Macy's current earnings report, and I'm not putting the company on my list of investment ideas right now, even though the stock closed up yesterday on the news (heck, the company didn't repurchase any shares last quarter and stated that it didn't see any more share repurchases coming for the rest of the year, so apparently the stock isn't on management's ideas list, either). I think there might be better retail investments out there, such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) or Target (NYSE: TGT). Yes, the retailer may have strong associations with Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, but I will not be blinded by such celebrity value.
Disclosure: I don't own shares in any company mentioned here; positions can change at any time.
In economics, inferior goods are defined as goods that are less in demand as consumers get richer but more in demand as consumers get poorer -- which of course happens when the economy slows down. Inferior goods are often the basic goods and services such as bus rides, potatoes, instant noodles and so on. And with increased demand, the price of such goods, unless regulated, can actually increase in bad times. A recent example of this is the increase in the price of rice (although other forces were at work there as well).
Well, recently we've seen a trend in retail that showcases this clearly -- discount retailers have been performing well relative to most other retailers. When retailers reported same-store sales for the month of April, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) and Costco (NASDAQ: COST) outdid their less fortunate counterparts as they have likely taken customers away from other retailers.
The trend that started a few months ago, with car sales (definitely a normal, not an inferior good) in the U.S. softening overall, has continued and even deepened as consumers have less disposable income after inflation and gas money is taken into account. With credit hard to come by, they have turned to cheaper alternatives. To wit, today Wal-Mart -- my "inferior retailer" -- reported that first-quarter profits rose 6.9%. Conversely, Liz Claiborne (NYSE: LIZ) -- the "normal retailer" -- swung to a first-quarter net loss.
To be fair though, it's the top line that matters if I'm looking at consumers' changing habits and there WMT saw a net 10.2% sales increase while LIZ's sales grew by much less during the quarter, 4.9% -- actually, not that bad. Even AnnTaylor Stores Corp. (NYSE: ANN) raised its forecast Monday. Indeed, somehow retail -- excluding auto sales of course -- has managed to hold up quite well recently despite market conditions as today's report indicates. Including autos, though, retail sales declined in April.
Is Target just trying to keep up, or does it see a benefit in matching drug price cuts by its larger competitor? In response to the price cuts, Target said that it "understands the challenges guests are facing in the current economic environment." It probably planned to make these price cuts as soon as Wal-Mart did and gain the same kind of free PR that comes with such a drastic price reduction in something that millions of Americans now depend on.
But Target does not position itself as the "low price" leader like Wal-Mart does. Its marketing is more upscale, and so is the appearance of its stores -- even while carrying much of the same merchandise. So why is Target matching these prescription drug price cuts? Is it trying to take customers from Wal-Mart? Of course -- the two are fierce competitors even though marketing and merchandise presentation strategies are what I'd consider to be worlds apart. Sometimes, price is everything.
The cognitive dissonance confronting people who hate Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) but lament the cost of prescription drugs is growing stronger.
In a press release on Monday, the retailer announced that "Beginning today, Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sam's Club pharmacies will fill prescriptions for up to 350 generic medications at $10 for a 90-day supply." Wal-Mart is also adding adding $9 generic prescriptions for up to a 30-day supplies for drugs treating osteoporosis, breast cancer, menopause and hormone deficiency, in addition to a new "$4 OTC offering," consisting of more than 1,000 products available without a prescription priced at $4 or less.
According to Wal-Mart, roughly "95 percent of the prescriptions written in the majority of therapeutic categories are included in the $4 Prescription Program." In the less than three years since it launched its cheap prescription drugs initiative, Wal-Mart estimated that it has saved consumers over $1 billion on health care.
But wait, there's more! At 7:26 PM EDT, Target (NYSE: TGT) responded with a press release stating that "As part of its ongoing commitment to provide exceptional value to guests and consistent with prior practices, Target will reduce prices on its prescription and over-the-counter drug offerings, remaining competitively priced with Wal*Mart."
Like most price wars, this one looks to turn out well for cash-strapped consumers.
But a word to the wise: part of the reason Wal-Mart and Target are doing this is that they want you to wander around and shop while you wait for your medication. So if you use a big-box store's pharmacy, bring a book or magazine and pull up a chair -- the savings will be nullified if you walk out of there with a $4 prescription and $30 worth of crap you don't need.
D. R. Horton (NYSE: DHI) shares are down over 6% in premarket trading after the homebuilder has swung to a loss for its fiscal second quarter of $1.31 billion, or $4.14 per share. With the continued housing slump, the company took hefty charges to write down the value of its inventory. Revenue plunged to $1.62 billion from $2.62 billion a year ago.
Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) shares are slumping over 9% this morning after the mortgage lender said it lost $2.2 billion or $2.57 a share in the first quarter due to mounting home-loan delinquencies as the housing slump continued. The results were below, far below that of estimates.
Vodafone Group (NYSE: VOD) said Tuesday that it's signed an agreement with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets including Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy and India.
Day one of the two-day FDA Anesthetic/Life Support Drugs & Drug Safety/Risk Management Advisory Committees meeting: Purdue Pharma's NDA for Oxycontin.
Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE:APC) to report Q1 earnings; conference call Tuesday at 10:00am.
Tuesday, May 6
Day two of the two-day FDA Anesthetic/Life Support Drugs & Drug Safety/Risk Mgmt Advisory Committees meeting: Cephalon's (NASDAQ:CEPH) sNDA for Fentora.
Molson Coors (NYSE:TAP) to report Q1 earnings; conference call at 12:00pm.
When longtime Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) CEO Bob Ulrich retires soon, he'll leave behind a very impressive legacy. Target, the second-largest discount retailer in the U.S., has grown alongside its larger competitor Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT). While Wal-Mart was opening stores and increasing sales at a blistering pace, Target was no slouch. Even though Wal-Mart grew much faster, Target's strategy worked pretty darn effectively, too.
Target seemed to beat Wal-Mart to the punch on the trends many customers cared about: brand-name clothing, hip marketing, clean and bright stores and very effective marketing and merchandising of its own store-brand product lines. While Wal-Mart became the generic big-box store, Target seemed to be the store shoppers flocked to to stay away from Wal-Mart's lifeless marketing, boring stores and grand-central-station customer traffic. In other words, price isn't everything to every U.S. retailer customer.
Now that Ulrich is retiring, his longtime company sidekick Gregg Steinhafel will be taking over with some lingering challenges that will put him on the hot seat almost immediately. Target is suffering, along with other retailers, from a seemingly-persistent economic slump and from the performance of its credit-card business (which is being hit with defaults due to consumer credit problems nationwide). Although things can be rosy at Target, they aren't for all of its customers at this time. With rising energy prices and the spike in food staple prices recently, Target's store brands like Archer Farms may suffer or need to be priced at the level of brand names -- and then they may lose their appeal to consumers looking for quality alternatives to higher-priced brand names. Steinhafel will have his plate full as he takes over when Ulrich turns 65 --Target's mandated retirement age for the CEO position.
Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) said this week that it wrote off 8.1% of its internal credit card loans in March. In case you haven't heard, consumers are grappling with record gas prices, rising food prices and the worst housing market in 25 years. As such, consumers are defaulting on more than just mortgage debt from short-sighted loans.
The second-largest discount retailer in the U.S. said that defaults from its own consumer credit line totaled $55.5 million for the month of March alone. In February, Target's annualized credit card balance write-off amount stood at 6.8%, which climbed to 8.1% in March. It's been suggested that Target take a long, hard look at its credit card operations, and the subject comes up every quarterly conference call when analysts continue to scratch their heads on why Target has such visibility to the credit market -- and the deterioration of it throughout 2008.
Target appears to also be in talks with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) to sell about half of its own credit card operations for about $4 billion, but there is nothing final yet. target also indicated that it had been talking with another potential suitor. In all, Target's credit card operations are worth about $8.3 billion -- a chunk the retailer would better use to build new stores and amplify share buybacks beyond past levels. However, revenue from the retailer's credit card operations is nothing to sneeze at either. For example, the retailer saw profit of $532 million just from its credit card operations along in the fourth quarter of 2007.
With the U.S. economy growing at an anemic rate (if it isn't already in a recession), investors should, in general, avoid the retail sector.
Still, there are those isolated companies, which, via either niche or operational execution, qualify as an exception, and with the above in mind Target is worth a review.
Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT) should post adequate FY 2009 same store sales growth, aided by refinements to its electronics, apparel, and home furnishings offerings, with a continued focus on value.
Over the weekend, I was looking around in the retail universe for potential bargains. Of course, where was I when Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) was at its lows? Oh well, can't dwell on the past, I guess.
I came across a stock I've looked at every so often -- American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO). Its 52-week low is an even $16 per share; the 52-week high is close to double that number. The closing price last Friday was $16.23. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that sales at the retailer probably haven't been doing too well in this weak economy -- yep, according to this Reuters piece, there was a bad double-digit drop in comps for the month of March. How bad? Try 12%. This led to a reduction for Q1 guidance. And, bingo, you got your weak stock.
Yet, American Eagle is still a decent mall brand, and its P/E ratio, according to AOL Finance, is pretty cheap at a value of about 9. The dividend yield is also worthy of note, as it is over 2%; that's higher than another stock I've been keeping my eye on, Target (NYSE: TGT). But there's a big difference between a Target and an American Eagle -- the latter is obviously more dependent on the whims of fashion trends. It's a different retailing model, catering to a specific demographic, and is thus potentially the riskier play. But as the market starts to discount an improving economy, as many theorize should happen overt the next several months, an American Eagle could rebound nicely. I'm not ready to buy shares yet, but I'll be watching this one.
Disclosure: I don't own shares in any of the companies mentioned here; positions can change at any time.
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says yesterday didn't deliver a giant down close, just profit-taking. It may signal a new bullish pattern to watch.
You just want it to close down, get clocked, remove the water torture. But what's really happening is we are working off the overbought condition in a fine fashion.
It's a natural thing in this market, after a big move, to give it all back and then some. However, that has not happened this time. We have had a series of small declines, nothing monumental and we may have to recognize that we are in a new pattern where we have profit-taking but no more.
I was over at Stockpickr.com yesterday -- I try to check in a couple of times a day -- and was not surprised to see questions in the Answers section about what is wrong with the steel stocks. To me, the steels are exhibiting classic bullish behavior, a great run followed by a small pullback -- true bull market behavior.
Now, here's the test: the comp sales. We had some bad numbers, especially from outfits like Target (NYSE: TGT) (Cramer's Take) and Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) (Cramer's Take), and I don't think it will matter! Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) (Cramer's Take) guided up, and I think it could power over $55.
I have been negative on this market, but I like the way it bounces off when it is down big. Have to recognize a new, more bullish pattern when you see one.
Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.
When the going gets tough, the CEO gets dropped. At least, that's what happened at retailing giant Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) in 2007. Company CEO Bob Ulrich saw his salary and bonuses reduced by 42% last year as the discount retailer failed to meet sales expectations and saw its stock price decline.
Like many CEOs, Ulrich's compensation is tied to its stock price and to the company's financial performance. Although he received $1.66 million in pay and non-stock compensation of $2.89 million (down from $6.13 million), Ulrich's total compensation dropped 67% in 2007 to $12.2 million.
Sounds like quite a bit to many of us, yes? Target explained that some of Ulrich's stock awards for the year were actually made in previous years and expensed in 2007, which makes up for some of the amount. Target officials were pretty clear about saying, "Our financial results in 2007 fell well short of our goals . . . as a result, non-equity incentive payouts for executive officers were near the low end of the payout range, and long-term performance share award payouts were negatively impacted."
Children's Place Retail Stores, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCE) has been in the news recently because it hasn't been able to maximize the value of the licensing agreement it made with The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) for its Disney Store chain a few years ago. In fact, it looks like Disney will be taking a lot of the stores back (I don't think Disney should do this, though). Well, Children's Place got some more bad news Monday in the form of an earnings cut from an analyst. John Zolidis, of Buckingham Research Group, believes Children's Place will achieve $0.40 per share for Q1, a number that is $0.09 lower than his previous earnings expectation. For the year, he thinks the retailer can do $1.44 per share; his previous estimate was $1.55 per share.
Of course, an analyst is not doing his job if he doesn't send something of a mixed message. He's cutting his expectations for earnings while at the same time saying that the valuation might be attractive at the moment for Children's Place's stock. Well, I sort of understand what he is saying, but let me say this: I don't like Children's Place right now and won't be buying shares, good valuation or not. This is one of those stocks and companies that just doesn't inspire confidence; the retailer plays in a tough niche, the stock is well off its highs, it couldn't properly grow Disney's retail operations, and, perhaps most importantly, there simply might be better ideas out there. If one wants to play retail, why not a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) or a Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT)?
Nope, I'm not interested in Children's Place. With this earnings cut, and with stronger retailers up for consideration, I think investors might do better buying something else. Yes, the stock and/or company will probably rebound, but I'm just not in the mood to speculate with this brand.
Disclosure: I own shares in Disney; positions can change at any time.
I read an interesting article on tax rebates and vacation spending. A lot of theories are floating around concerning the exact stimulative effect President Bush's $168 billion program will have on the ailing economy. If the article I read is correct, then the vacation industry may be a big beneficiary.
An expert on the tourism sector, economist Steve Morse of the University of Tennessee, suggests that timing is the key here. Since the rebate monies will be flowing at the same time as Americans start to plan and go on their vacations, Morse believes that economic activities related to enjoying time off will see a tangible boost. In fact, he further states that vacations are something that people might not necessarily deny themselves, even in times of recession. He points out that people might tend to take on a bit of debt to fund vacations since they see it as a "right of life," as he puts it.
I see the logic, especially the "right of life" issue. Not only are vacations important to everyone, but they are sort of comparable to toys at Christmas -- know how they say that people won't stop giving toys to their children even during hard times? Well, vacations are like toys for adults (and if the adults have children, as many do, then vacations are like toys for adults and children). And adults will not cease gifting themselves during the summertime.
Retailer Macy's (NYSE: M) first fiscal quarter wasn't that bad, at least in terms of the analyst game. The company, which competes with mall colleagues such as J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) and Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), reported net income of 2 cents per diluted share from continuing operations. The denizens of Wall Street thought the company would lose 2 cents, so management came ahead in this regard by four pennies. Bravo!
In economics, 
.gif){kind=logo}
When longtime 
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says yesterday didn't deliver a giant down close, just profit-taking. It may signal a new bullish pattern to watch.
I read an 
Just how high will U.S. gasoline prices rise?
Nordstrom and Kohl's post smaller-than-expected Q1 profit declines
Oil hits record $127.43 on supply concerns, raised Goldman forecast
