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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Clarke who wrote (9447)	12/30/1999 1:13:00 PM
From: jeffbas	Respond to of 78542

Jim, as I posted on YAHOO, I do not regard that new filing as "news". Mr. Bennett's intentions were disclosed in his October 15 filing, and subsequent purchases should certainly have been expected. Mr. River's question on inventory is interesting. Over the holidays I spent some time with a friend who knows retail a lot better than I do. He said that companies who properly account for inventory will, for example, mark the Spring clothing that is leftover down to next to nothing after the season and Spring clearance sales are over. This avoids buildup of inventory valuation on goods with essentially no value. With department stores moving ever more toward soft goods from the old hard goods days, this is important to be sure EBSC does this. I could not answer my friends question about inventory valuation policy and the 10K paragraph on it is not detailed: "Merchandise Inventories -- Retail inventory is determined principally by the retail method applied on a last-in, first-out (LIFO) basis and is stated at the lower of cost or market. If the first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis had been used, inventories would be higher by $886 at January 30, 1999 and $6,657 at January 31, 1998. The decrease in the LIFO reserve in fiscal 1998 occurred in the fourth quarter ended January 30, 1999, as a result of increased inventory levels primarily due to the acquisition of Stone & Thomas." Jim, have you talked with them about inventory valuation?