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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (66733)	2/7/2001 8:08:35 PM
From: afrayem onigwecher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 122087

NVEI - NEW VISUAL ENTERTAINMENT INC Exchange: OTCBB Last Price: 6.00 at 15:56 EST Change: Up 0.094 (+1.59%) High: 6.062 at 13:25 EST Low: 5.875 at 11:20 EST

To: StockDung who wrote (66733)	2/12/2001 7:55:39 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Respond to of 122087

MotleyFool.com - Daily Double Daily Double: J. Jill Dons a Double By Rick Aristotle Munarriz The J. Jill Group Inc. Ticker: (Nasdaq: JILL - news) Phone: 617-376-4300 Website: jjill.com Price (2/9/01): $29 How Did It Double? Retailers never got a kick out of soccer moms. Suburbia malls have always been quick to line up a sea of stores catering to fickle teens or pro-dressed career women. The market for premium quality casual wear that emphasized comfort over form-fitting fashion was relatively untapped in the realm of specialty retailers. The AnnTaylors (NYSE: ANN - news) and Lerners of the mall space that aimed at the "younger middle age" and "upper middle class" brackets filled their racks with conservative workplace or going-out apparel. While a Lands' End (NYSE: LE - news) or Gap (NYSE: GPS - news) hit the cozy garb sweet spot, they often went too far into preppy basics while shying away from a gender-specific concept. So J. Jill filled the niche, exclusively through mail order, and thrived. Popularity came with a price -- a welcomed one. Two years ago the company opened a new fulfillment center that more than quadrupled the size of the original. Then J. Jill decided to cash in on its juicy mailing list and loyal following. After all, it knew where its customers were. It knew how to get closer. At a time when trendy shops were closing, J. Jill began to take up desperate mall landlords looking to fill the empty spaces. Rent low. Sell high. Meanwhile, like most mail order warriors, J. Jill was a natural to turn to the Internet as a new distribution outlet. Scoring on all fronts, the company was able to expand and explore while exceeding analyst expectations. Investors lined up behind the shoppers, looking to buy in. Business Description Massachusetts-based J. Jill Group is a retailer of casual career and weekend wear clothing for women. Its target market is the 35-55 age group. J. Jill started out as a mail order company for its namesake and Nicole Summers catalogs. 1999 was a year of transition for the company. It relaunched its website and opened its first retail store location in November of that year. It also began to wind down its Nicole Summers circulation, ending it completely last year. As of last month, the company had 22 J. Jill retail locations to accent its strong direct channels of distribution. Financial Facts Income Statement 12-month sales: $220.8 million 12-month income: $4.9 million 12-month EPS: $0.48 Profit Margin: 2.2% Market Cap: $290 million Balance Sheet Cash: $1.2 million Current Assets: $62.2 million Current Liabilities: $40.3 million Long-term Debt $17.8 million Ratios Price-to-earnings: 36.3 Price-to-sales: 1.3 How Could You Have Found This Double? The beauty -- and often the risk -- of following the underfollowed is how easy it is for a company to blow away the few available estimates or to miss them by a country mile. J. Jill took the high road when it gave Wall Street a treat, reporting its fiscal 2000 third-quarter earnings on Halloween. Sales shot up 26%, reversing the trend of lower sales due to ditching the Nicole Summers concept. Summers come. Summers go. Letting go of the line, which unlike its namesake catalog was serving a crowded dressy career-attire segment, was well worth the dip in sales earlier in the year. Gross margins shot up more than 1000 basis points for the quarter -- to 36.7%. It was also the first quarter in the company's history that produced double-digit operating margins. However, the real surprise came from the company's targets of 23-28% growth for the December quarter and earnings between $1.22 and $1.28 a share for the entire year. The lone estimate at the time? A paltry $0.57 showing. There was certainly beauty in taking on that risk. In a Peter Lynch-ian way, one might argue that J. Jill's customers -- particularly those who were flocking to the new retail locations -- might have seen the outperformance coming. At the very least it was easy to see how putting an end to the Summers lovin' would produce healthier margins despite an initial downtick in companywide sales. Where to From Here? Interested in following what is still underfollowed? The only analyst projection for the company is calling for earnings of $1.21 a share. Right away, the fact that the sum falls just shy of the company's own targets is intriguing. Is it a screaming green light? Or does the analyst know something we don't? As to the former, maybe. As to the latter, just remember how off the earlier analyst prediction was. Just my 57 cents worth of an opinion. J. Jill is on a roll, pun probably intended. As a matter of fact, remember that 23-28% target for fourth-quarter growth? That implied revenues would climb to the $75 million to $78 million range for the quarter. Last month the company revised that figure higher. Sales for the critical holiday quarter would come in between $87 million and $89 million. That means that sales grew by at least 42%. What is really encouraging is that, like in the third quarter, the company was able to achieve this without any major clearance discounting -- a fate that has befallen many of the trendy mallrat haunts. So margins should continue to be strong. While the company recently concluded a private placement that will be slightly dilutive in the near term, that won't be a factor in the fourth quarter. End result? It would be a big surprise if the company doesn't have an upward surprise when it reports final fiscal 2000 results at the end of the month. An easy goal for the soccer-mom magnet? Maybe. Maybe not. When you're following the underfollowed, uncertainty is the only constant. .....