Category Archives: Industry Analysis

Whole Foods (WFM) and Amazon (AMZN)

June 19, 2017 By in Amazon, supermarkets, Uncategorized, Whole Foods Tags: , , 1 Comment

I was a big proponent of WFM in its early days but haven’t owned it for a long time.

My quick look at the company’s financials this morning tells me it’s an odd duck among food distributors.  Successful distribution is all about low margins + rapid inventory turnover + shrewd working capital management + rising sales leading to strong profit growth.  WFM exhibits only one of these characteristics:  rapid inventory turnover.  The number I get from the annual report, which I find almost too good to believe, says that WFM’s annual sales are 30x its average inventory.  This compares with 10x for AMZN and 15x for Kroger (KR).

On the other hand, WFM’s operating margin is more than 50% higher than KR’s and nearly triple AMZN’s.  The excess of payables (what a firm owes to suppliers) over receivables (what customers owe the merchant)–and a key measure of operating strength–is about 1% of sales for WFM, while 3.6% for KR and about 15% for AMZN.  In addition, WFM is no longer growing–the main reason, I think, the company’s PE has been cut in half over the past couple of years from about 40x to 20x (pre-AMZN bid).

WFM’s problem isn’t simply that its margins are too high to induce people to buy more than they do of what the company has to offer.  Nor is it the assertion by some that WFM is very inefficient and should be making a higher margin than it actually does.

Rather, it’s that the current market situation is highly unstable, on several fronts:

–WFM-like offerings are increasingly available from less expensive chains like Trader Joe’s or even regular supermarkets

–having severely damaged the profits of incumbent grocers in the UK, deep food discounters from Germany–Aldi and Lidl–have both announced that their next target is the US.  Even if the two are unsuccessful, increased competition is bound to mean lower prices

–AMZN has decided that the time for online food delivery on a large scale in the US has come.  It’s also possible that it too is worried about the potential effect that Aldi and Lidl may have and has sped up its food distribution plans.

 

how will the takeover work out?

It’s hard to know.  WFM’s management hasn’t covered itself in glory over the past decade.  It needed to be bailed out from operating difficulties by Green Equity Investors in late 2008.  And it doesn’t seem to have responded well to increased competition since.  On the other hand, AMZN’s experiments in food delivery have had indifferent success so far. At the very least, though, AMZN brings a strong record in controlling distribution operations, expertise which WFM seems to me to need; WFM brings a brand name and the grocery equivalent of Amazon lockers.

My thoughts:  the one thing I’m confident of is that food prices will generally be lower for consumers in a couple of years than they are now.  I’d prefer to look for places where extra discretionary income can be spent than to try to play food directly.

 

a new casino for Connecticut, good or bad?

June 8, 2017 By in Casinos, economics, local casinos, microeconomics, Uncategorized Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Shortly after I retired as a portfolio manager, I went to work part-time at the Rutgers business school in Newark.  No, it wasn’t to teach investing or portfolio management–accreditation rules effectively rule this out for anyone without a PhD in (the alternate reality of) academic finance.  Instead, it was in a practical management consulting class run by adjuncts with real-world experience and advising mostly small businesses.  (We were all fired several years later and the program–the only profitable area in a school dripping red ink–dissolved.   …but that’s another story).

Anyway, one of the projects I mentored involved a casual dining restaurant.  A student had a connection with a very successful pizza restaurant whose approach might serve as a model for our client.  The pizza owner said he had superior results.  How so?  …he had cloth tablecloths and fresh flowers on each table; the food was good;  he spoke with every customer himself to make sure everyone knew they were welcome.  In fact, he drew customers from as far as 15 miles away.

How far was the closest competing pizza restaurant?   …30 miles.

Put a different way, in this state customers hungry for pizza went to the closest restaurant, despite what this owner thought was his special charm!

It’s the same with a lot of other things, including local casinos.

In the case of Connecticut, the two existing operators are coming under threat by the decision of Massachusetts to legalize gambling in that state.  In particular, it’s allowing MGM to open a casino just on the northern border of Connecticut in Springfield, MA.

Hartford has just responded by authorizing a new casino in East Windsor just on the Connecticut side of the border from Springfield, to be jointly run by the two incumbent operators.

This is an interesting case.  Let’s take a (simple) look:

My pizza rule says customers go to the closest casino.   If that’s correct, the new Massachusetts casino will reduce the existing Connecticut casinos’ revenue by a substantial amount.  Hartford estimates that amount at a quarter of the current business, about $1.6 billion.   If they want to keep the remaining 75%, however, it seems unlikely to me that the casino operators will be able to reduce their costs by much.  So their profits could easily be cut in half.

And when the proposed East Windsor casino opens?

Figure that East Windsor will take back from Springfield half of the revenue initially lost.   That’s $200 million a year.  From the state’s point of view, any revenue gain means higher tax collections–in this case, about another $35 million a year.  So it’s understandable why East Windsor has gotten a legislative seal of approval.  It’s not clear, however, that the casino operators are going to be better off–because they’re taking on the expense of a third location in order to protect 12% of their current revenue.

 

We’ve also seen this movie before in the northeast US, with the effect on Atlantic City of gambling legalization in Pennsylvania, and on Pennsylvania of legalization in Ohio and Maryland.  One additional complication in this instance is that both of the incumbent operators are Native American tribes, for whom maintaining/expanding employment may be more important than profits.  A second is that the new CT casino will be run by two in-state rivals.  That should be interesting to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

continuing apparel retailing woes

May 24, 2017 By in Current Market Thoughts, Retail, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

I haven’t been watching publicly traded apparel retailers carefully for years.  For me, the issues/problems in picking winners in this area have been legion.  There’s the generational shift in spending power from Baby Boomers to Millennials, the move from bricks-and-mortar to online, the lingering effects of recession on spending power and spending habits.  And then, of course, there’s the normal movement of retailers in and out of fashion.

I’m not saying that retail isn’t worth following.  I just find it too hard to find solid ground to build an investment thesis on.  Maybe the pace of change is too rapid for me.  Maybe I don’t have a good enough feel for how Millennials regard apparel–or whether retiring Boomers are using their accumulated inventories of fashion clothing rather than adding to them.

Having said that, I’m still surprised–shocked, actually–at how the current quarter for apparel retailers is playing out.  It seems like every day a new retailer is reporting quarterly earnings that fall below management guidance, usually the latest in a string of sub-par quarters.  That itself isn’t so unusual.

But the stocks react by plummeting.

You’d think that the market would have caught on that Retailland is facing structural headwinds.  Or at least, that the retail area that made the careers of so many active managers over the past twenty or thirty years doesn’t exist any more.

 

Is it robot traders?  Is it an effect of continuing buying by index funds?  I don’t know.  But the continuing inability of investors to factor into stock prices the continuing slump of apparel retailers is certainly odd.

the Sears “going concern” warning

May 19, 2017 By in Accounting, Retail, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

the auditor’s opinion

On my first day of OJT in equity securities analysis, the instructor asked our class what the most important page of a company’s annual report/10k filing is.  The correct answer, which escaped most of us, is:  the one that contains the auditor’s assessment of the accuracy of the financials and the state of health of the company.  The auditor’s report is usually brief and formulaic.  Longer = trouble.

Anything less than a clean bill of health is a matter grave concern.  The worst situation is one in which the auditor expresses doubt about the firm’s ability to remain a going concern.

a new financial accounting rule

In today’s world, that class would be a little different.  Yes, the auditor’s opinion is the single most important thing.  But new, post-recession financial accounting rules that go into effect with the 2016 reporting year require the company itself to point out any risks it sees to its ability to remain in business.

the Sears case

That’s what Sears did when it issued its 2016 financials in late March.  What’s odd about this trailblazing instance is that while the firm raised the question, its auditors issued an “unqualified” (meaning clean-bill-of-health) opinion.

what’s going on?

Suppliers to retail study their customers’ operations very carefully, with a particular eye on creditworthiness.  That’s because trade creditors fall at the absolute back of the line for repayment in the case of a customer bankruptcy.  They don’t get unsold merchandise back; the money from their sale will likely go to interests higher up on the repayment food chain–like employee salaries/pensions and secured creditors.  So their receivable claims are pretty much toast.

Because of this, at the slightest whiff of trouble, and to limit the damage a bankruptcy might cause them, suppliers begin to shrink the amount and assortment of merchandise, and the terms of payment for them, that they offer to a troubled customer.   My reading of the Sears CEO’s recent blog post is that this process has already started there.

It may also be, assuming I’m correct, that the effects are not yet visible in the working capital data from 2016 that an auditor might look at.  Hence the unqualified statement.  But we’re at the very earliest stage with the new accounting rules, so nothing is 100% clear.

breaking a contract?

Sears has complained in the same blog post about the behavior of one supplier, Hong Kong-based One World, which supplies Craftsman-branded power tools to Sears through its Techtronic subsidiary.  Techtronic apparently wants to unilaterally tear up its contract  with Sears and stop sending any merchandise.

Obviously, Sears can’t allow this to happen.  It’s not only the importance of the Craftsman line.  If One World is successful, other suppliers who may have been more sympathetic to Sears will doubtless expect similar treatment.

Developments here are well worth monitoring, not only for Sears, but as a template for how new rules will affect other retailers.

 

 

 

buying an individual tech stock

May 17, 2017 By in Accounting, Stock ideas, Technology, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 3 Comments

This is just a brief overview:

–Buying any stock involves both a qualitative and a quantitative element.  That is:  What does the company do that makes this a good stock to own? and How do the numbers–the PE ratio, asset value, dividend yield and earnings growth–stack up?

–For value stocks, the numbers are more important; for growth stocks, the story is the key.  That’s because the primary element in success for value investors is how carefully they buy (because the ceiling for a given stock is relatively clearly defined).  For growth investors, it’s selling before/as the drivers of extra-fast earnings expansion run out of steam.

–Most tech stocks fall in the growth category.  My advocacy for Intel a few years ago was one of the rare occasions where a tech story is about under valued assets.

–In most cases, tech companies own key intellectual property–software, patents, industrial knowhow–that is in great demand, and which competitors don’t have and can’t seem to create substitutes for.  As long as that remains true, the company’s stock typically does well.  As I just mentioned, a crucial element in success with tech (or any other growth sector) is to exit before/as the growth story begins to unwind.  One yardstick is that this typically happens five years or so after the super-growth starts.  Yes, the best growth companies, like Apple or Microsoft or Amazon, have an ability reinvent themselves and thereby extend their period of strong earnings success.  But this isn’t the norm.

–Learning to be a stock investor is sort of like learning to play baseball.  There’s no substitute for actually playing the game.  The best way I know to learn about a stock is to buy a very small position and see what happens.  Don’t just sit idle, though.  Read everything on the company website, and the websites of competitors.  Read the last annual report and 10k.  Listen to (or read the transcripts of) the firm’s earnings conference calls.  Find and monitor (at least the headlines) financial newspapers and relevant blogs.  Try to form expectations about what future earnings might be and check this against what actually happens.  Then figure out where/how you went wrong and adjust.  Watch how the market reacts to news.  At first you may be terrible.  I certainly was.  But if you’re honest with yourself in your postmortems, you’ll probably make considerable progress quickly.

–Sooner or later–preferably sooner, learn to interpret a balance sheet and income statement.  A local community college course would probably be good, but you can get the basics of financial accounting (definitely don’t worry about double entry bookkeeping) from a book over a weekend.  Remember, here too there’s no substitute for the experience of trying to work out from a given company’s actuals what future income statements, balance sheets and flow-of-funds statements will look like.