Retailing sucks. Most of the few stores reporting decent results are not as good as it appears because of the way the calendar falls. Here's a couple of comments from Herb Greenberg at TSCM this am
Herb Greenberg
plce
12/06/01 9:21 AM ET
Pay special attention to Children's Place. Analysts had been expecting same store sales to fall by 5% to 8%, but they fell by 16%. And that's WITH the positive boost most retailers are getting from the shift in the calendar with more days in the month after Thanksgiving.
The real issue here, though, is that there was NO hint of trouble last week when PLCE management met with analysts at a CSFirst Boston conference, where the company touted all that was good. More interesting, on Tuesday Stanley Silverstein, a director and the father-in-law of CEO Ezra Dabah, filed to sell 50,000 shares of PLCE stock.
hg
Herb Greenberg
chbs
12/06/01 9:12 AM ET
Careful about jumping to conclusions about strong retail sales. Christopher & Banks, for example, reports a 10% gain in November comp store sales. But take away the "calendar shift" from more post-Thanksgiving days, and sales were up just 4%; analysts had been expecting 5%. What's more, December will be up only 3% to 5%. Hardly barnburner. |
