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To: reaper who wrote (74448)	5/23/2003 11:00:41 AM
From: Paul Shread	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 209892

Many thanks, reaper. Very nice observations. I was thinking along the lines of CKEC, which I think shot up right away and has stayed up there.

To: reaper who wrote (74448)	5/23/2003 11:11:48 AM
From: JRI	Respond to of 209892

(Wait a year or so...) Sounds like the Expos are a buy now? g

To: reaper who wrote (74448)	5/23/2003 12:19:03 PM
From: ajtj99	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 209892

There was an article about that guy in Forbes a couple weeks ago. They were basically saying he thought this was going to be another Autozone, which he bought the debt of and reorganized. However, after he bought much of the debt, the value of it plunged, and everyone and their brother was more than happy to unload it to him. In other words, he's in deep and trying to extract himself. I doubt he's successful in a way that would please other shareholders. Everyone thought Carl Ichan was a genius until he got his nuts handed to him with TWA. The thing is, these guys are not always going to win. We had opportunities to sell to K-Mart 5-years ago. I saw what was going on and where they were headed. 3-years ago a friend asked if he should sell to K-Mart. I said make sure you get a factor (a 3rd party to guarantee the money in exchange for a percentage fee). He did not. He lost his butt in the bankruptcy. I sell to retail. I know this business. I've had many of these desperate companies come and beg to buy (Ames, K-Mart, Wards, Hechinger, and many more regional players). I've got sales reps that call on K-Mart (not for my stuff). I deal with buyers who used to work at K-Mart. I have friends that supply K-Mart. I know liquidators that have been basically camped out in Troy for the past several years. My point is, they are DOA. I made a similar argument 15-months ago about how WCOM was going to go chapter 11. Many people argued otherwise. Part of what I do when we go after business is evaluate the credit worthiness of a potential customer based upon their balance sheet and industry information. This keeps us from getting blindsided. We have anticipated nearly every bad thing that has occured in retail, and have been blind-sided only a couple times for very small amounts. The largest bankruptcy we had the past 2-years happened with us actually owing the customer money (small amount, maybe 5-grand), which we didn't have to pay. It was a $1-Billion retailer that we had just shipped $800,000.00 worth of goods to several days before they filed. We made sure all their ads for the goods were printed, held the orders, and then demanded payment wired in advance. They had no choice, as they had all these goods in Thanksgiving day ads. They were screwed if they didn't have our stuff.