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Strategies & Market Trends : LastShadow's Position Trading -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jtech who wrote (42737)	2/21/2003 11:38:26 AM
From: jtech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 43080

aho dont look good but I like the company.It dont matter what is to be will be. Buy puts on aho if you dont want to own it.

To: jtech who wrote (42737)	2/24/2003 4:37:24 AM
From: jtech	Respond to of 43080

This is why you have to buy puts as insurance against any stock you buy. Message #42737 from jtech at Feb 21, 2003 9:30 AM AHO is getting really close to its low here. Plus - really a good company with growth. Negative- p/e is high compared to industry and dividend cut is possible.Dollar/currency exchange Im looking to buy here and purchasing march 10 puts @.35 x .60 to cover a earnings warning and forecast. Earnings due 3/5 Reuters UPDATE - Ahold CEO, CFO step down in U.S. accounting probe Monday February 24, 4:26 am ET By Melanie Cheary (Adds share, comments from teleconference, background) AMSTERDAM, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Europe's second-largest retailer Ahold shocked financial markets on Monday when its chief executive and chief financial officer stepped down after it found accounting irregularities at its U.S. Foodservice unit. ADVERTISEMENT The Dutch retailer (Amsterdam:AHLN.AS - News), which warned on earnings twice last year, also said 2002 net profit would be "significantly lower" than expected following the overstatement of earnings at the key Foodservice business in 2001 and 2002. This overstatement could exceed $500 million at the operating level, it said, with the majority falling in fiscal 2002. Ahold President and Chief Executive Officer Cees van der Hoeven and Chief Financial Officer Michael Meurs will resign, the company said in a statement. "Is 'Ahold' Dutch for 'Enron'?" asked one pan-European equity dealer in London as the Dutch group shaped up to become the latest victim of a string of accounting scandals that brought giant Enron Corp (Other OTC:ENRNQ.PK - News) and telecoms group WorldCom (Other OTC:WCOEQ.PK - News) to their knees. Shares in Ahold, which operates 1,600 stores along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. under the Stop & Shop and Giant brands, were suspended limit-down in Amsterdam but traded 44 percent lower at 5.40 euros on electronic trading platform Instinet. The company's listed debt was also hit badly. According to Reuters data, Ahold's 5.875 percent euro bond due March 2012 (NL014028064=) was bid at 67.7 percent of face value at 0830 GMT, more than 29 points lower on the day. "The Ahold statement is concentrating people's minds on companies with the largest debt. It has 12 billion euros of debt and no visible means of repaying," said analyst Philip Dorgan at WestLb Panmure. INVESTIGATIONS IN PROGRESS Ahold (NYSE:AHO - News), which reported its first net loss in almost 30 years in the second quarter, said it would have to restate earnings for 2000, 2001 and last year's interim results. Alhold said it had also been investigating the legality of certain transactions at its Argentine subsidiary Disco. It said these investigations were ongoing. Supervisory Board Chairman Henny de Ruiter, now acting CEO, told a teleconference the issues in the United States and Argentina had been discovered very recently. "All these things arose from the 2002 audit," he said, declining comment on whether any other board members would resign. Some senior executives of its U.S. Foodservice purchasing and marketing management team have been suspended. "My priority will be to stabilise the business and get to the bottom of the problems... I am not in the least bit pessimistic about where we will be in a year from now," de Ruiters said. The group said it had secured 3.1 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in new funding to support its liquidity position, a move it said left it fully funded. Ahold's U.S. Foodservice is the second-largest food distributor to restaurants, hotels, healthcare institutions and sports facilities in the United States after Sysco Corp (NYSE:SYY - News). The Dutch group has taken a knock from difficult trading conditions and its enormous exposure to the world's biggest economy, making it vulnerable to any downturn there. Earlier this year, management was forced to clarify confusing discrepancies between its results according to Dutch accounting rules and those by U.S. accounting standards. Disclosure concerns also hit the shares after the group published a surprise trading update in October and amid concerns that some sales numbers had leaked out prematurely. Van der Hoeven said in November that he had tendered his resignation in the spring of 2002 as he was disappointed with the company's first profit warning, but it was refused by the supervisory board. (Additional reporting by Alison Tudor, Natalie Waters and Catherine Evans in London)