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To: yard_man who wrote (131903)	10/30/2001 1:30:44 PM
From: reaper	Respond to of 436258

<<what about ODP>> haven't looked at it in a while. they are shrinking the store base and freeing up a lot of working capital, though. this is giving them cash to pare debt and buy back stock. their lease committments are not onerous either. in a back-asswards way they were lucky in that the capital markets took the punch bowel away from them a couple of years ago -- so they haven't expanded willy-nilly into the teeth of the downturn as have the companies mentioned in my prior note, or companies that Patron often mentions like BBBY, BBY and KSS. my bet is that companies like LIN are going to really regret those last few leases they signed and that last boatload or two of inventory they brought over. remember w/ retailers those leases are DEBT; they owe the payments whether or not anybody shops there. ODP likely to be a zero growth business w/ OK cash flow for a while. Could be like Darden (DRI -- they own Red Lobster and Olive Garden) which actually has FEWER restaurants today than they had in 1996 but has been a HUGE stock since the underlying economics of the business are OK and they weren't sooooo leveraged they couldn't re-structure. cheers