Tag Archives: J C Penney

J C Penney (JCP) issues stock

September 27, 2013 By in Current Market Thoughts, hedge funds, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

the JCP offering

JCP filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC indicating it is selling 84 million shares of common stock to the public at $9.52 a share through Goldman Sachs.  (In a typical provision of any offering called the “overallotment,” Goldman has permission to sell another 12.8 million shares if it can.)

Let’s say Goldman gets a commission of $.22 a share.  That would mean proceeds to JCP of $781 million – $900 million.

business stabilizing

Just in advance of the red herring, JCP filed an 8-K in which it said it expected comparable store sales to be positive during both 3Q13 and 4Q13.  The reason?  …merchandise that JCP customers want to buy is now in stock, and in the sizes that JCP customers fit.

three aspects of the offering

I hadn’t intended to write so much about JCP, but I think there are three interesting aspects to the offering.

1.  the size

This is a big offering, amounting to over a third of the shares already outstanding.

2.  why a stock offering?

For companies like JCP that want to raise a lot of capital, their first thought is to borrow.  It’s easier to do.  Transaction costs are lower.  Also, Americans firmly believe that debt is a lower-cost form of capital than debt, so borrowing is more beneficial for shareholders.

There comes a point, however, when lenders perceive the capital structure of a firm has become too lopsided.  When that happens, they will refuse to lend any more until the firm demonstrates Wall Street’s confidence in it by raising equity capital.

I assume we’re at that point for JCP.

why not six weeks ago?

After all, the sales projections JCP made in the 8-K are better, I think, than Wall Street had been assuming.  So it’s unlikely that JCP’s need for cash is greater now than it was a few weeks ago.

It’s also hard to think that a big company like JCP would not do continuous financial forecasting of its future cash flows that would indicate when it would need fresh funds, and in what amounts.

I don’t know the answer.

One obvious difference between now and the end of August, however, is that in the meantime two insiders, Pershing Square and Vornado, have unloaded their entire stakes, 52 million shares (!!), at a reported price of about $13 each.  That’s 36% higher than JCP itself is getting today.

I guess you might argue that everyone knew the two activists would be selling, and that this overhang would be enough to scupper a potential offering by JCP.  Seems pretty lame, though.

Me, I’m nonplussed (the first time I’ve used that word in my life).  If I were a JCP shareholder, I’d be stunned.  Maybe we just chalk this up as one of the perils of riding the coattails of latter-day robber barons.  But if I were a shareholder, I’d want to know how the board allowed this to happen.

On September 20th, JCP’s controller left the company.  Is this connected?

two lessons for analysts from JCP

September 26, 2013 By in Current Market Thoughts, hedge funds, Retail, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

JCP  in the press again over the past two days.

I’ve only seen the headlines, which assert that:

–JCP is trying to sever the 10-year $200 million agreement the previous CEO, Ron Johnson arranged with Martha Stewart.  Why?   …the MS merchandise isn’t selling

–JCP is looking to raise new funds

–a Goldman analyst has used the “B” word (bankruptcy) in warning clients to avoid JCP stock.

I want to make two relatively narrow points:

1.  Analysts are extremely reluctant to speculate on a possible corporate bankruptcy in writing.  They may mention the possibility on the phone or in meetings, but not in print.

A boss of mine years ago at Value Line did this once.  He wrote about a small-cap magazine company that if weak advertising trends continued for the following twelve months, there was a risk the firm would have to close its doors.  Advertising dried up almost immediately on publication of the report.  The company was out of business in three months.

Raising the prospect of bankruptcy is like shouting “Fire!!” in a crowded theater.  It has consequences.

Also, if the firm survives it will never forgive the analyst who made the call.  The Goldman analyst who wrote the report must either be very young or extremely confident that the prediction won’t come back to haunt him/her.

 

2.  In graduate school I spent a year at the university in Tübingen in southwest Germany.  For a while I lived with a family where we all went mushroom hunting on weekends.  What we found made up at least one or two meals the following week.  That’s where I learned about the deaths head mushroom.  Eating it is most often fatal; symptoms only emerge after it’s too late to get treatment.

The obvious course of action–learn what the deaths head looks like, and don’t eat it.

There’s an analogy here.

In the case of JCP, the symptoms we’re seeing now are the direct result of corporate decisions made two or more years ago by ex-CEO Ron Johnson and defended for a long time by Bill Ackman.  Oddly, both seem to have been thinking–contrary to all experience–that falling sales could be remedied by applying a double does of what was causing them.  What’s equally surprising is the the JCP board let the situation go unaddressed until it had reached crisis proportions.

 

My second point:  many times corporate strategies, once put in motion, are difficult or impossible to reverse.  So we, as investors, have to be constantly scanning the horizon for indications of possible weakness. Normally, the early signs of deterioration are found on the balance sheet (rising receivables and inventories) and the cash flow statement.

For JCP, though, there was nothing subtle about its difficulties.  Sales fell apart almost as soon as Ron Johnson took the controls.  Another reason it”s so hard to understand why the board let the situation get so out of control.

 

Bill Ackman, J C Penney (JCP)’s largest shareholder, is leaving the board. What does this mean?

August 14, 2013 By in Current Market Thoughts, Portfolio management, Private equity, Retail, Stock ideas Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

the JCP board and its CEO search

Bill Ackman is the activist investor who initially targeted (no pun intended) JCP as a serial laggard that could be made to perform better.  Recently, he has argued with the rest of that company’s board–at first in private–about the pace of JCP’s search for a new CEO.  Ackman believes the search could/should be done in two months.  The rest of the board seems to be thinking in terms of nine.

Last week he made public a letter he wrote to the board, which he concluded with, “We can’t afford to wait.”

This week, after being criticized by many, he resigned from the JCP board.

Certainly. the spat between the board and its largest shareholder won’t speed the flow of CEO candidates knocking on JCP’s door.  On the other hand, it won’t deter very many, either, in my view.  What it does do is raise the price the new CEO can command.

The media have portrayed Mr. Ackman as a shallow, petulant Ivy-Leaguer having a mini-tantrum because he isn’t getting his way.  Entertaining and gossipy as that may sound, the media assessment is probably not right.  In fact, Mr. Ackman may prefer that people view the affair this way, because is suggests that everything else, save Mr. Ackman’s personality, is all right.

It isn’t.

what’s really going on

Two possibilities, one based on back-of-the envelope calculations, the other pure conjecture.  Both are based on the idea that the fact of the board disagreement has information in it–and that it’s not gossip column fare.

1.  a castle in the air

Let’s say the properties JCP controls are worth $5 billion.  That’s halfway between brokerage house estimates (which may ultimately come from Mr. Ackman) and the recently announced, but incomplete, Cushman and Wakefield assessment of $4.06 billion.

If we think the rental yield on these assets should be 7%, then the annual rental income from them should be $350 million.  That’s the amount a third-party would pay to do business on those properties.

How much does JCP pay?  I don’t know.  Certainly it’s substantially less than $350 million.  Let’s say JCP actually pays $50 million. This means that in a sense JCP real estate subsidizes the department store operations by the difference between what it could get by renting the properties to someone else vs. operating JCP stores on them.  According to what I’ve written so far, that subsidy is $300 million.  After income tax, that amounts to about $200 million.

Why is this important?

In 2010, the last year before Mr. Ackman brought in Ron Johnson to run the company, JCP made $378 million in net income.  If my numbers are anywhere near correct, over half JCP’s profits came from owning real estate.  In 2011, selling stuff lost money.

Strip away real estate gains over a long period and JCP’s retailing profits look very highly cyclical.  That makes sense, because JCP’s traditional market has been less affluent consumers, whose incomes are the most cyclical.  The company may suffer a lot during recession but makes up for that by making a relative killing as recovery gets into year three or four.

In other words, JCP should be cleaning up now.  Instead, it’s piling up enormous losses.  This spells potential trouble as/when the economic cycle turns down, and–if past form runs true–profits evaporate.

Maybe this is the source of Mr. Ackman’s sense of urgency.

2.  pure speculation

Maybe Mr. Ackman’s chief worry isn’t his projected timeline for JCP’s profits but the structure of the fund he put together to invest in the company.  He’s told reporters that his cost basis in JCP stock is $25.  But he may have financial leverage or options or other derivative instruments that make the risk/reward clock tick faster for his fund than for JCP itself.

Whatever the cause of Mr. Ackman’s behavior over the past few weeks, it’s almost certainly not simply pique.

lessons from J C Penney (JCP)

May 8, 2013 By in developing competence as an investor, Fixing mistakes, Portfolio management, Recent Market Action Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

preliminary 1Q13 results

In conjunction with arranging a five-year $1.75 billion loan through Goldman, JCP has filed an 8-k in which it gives preliminary information about the April 2013 quarter.

–Sales were $2.635 billion, down 16.4% year-on-year (comp store sales = -16.6%).  Looking at a two-year comparison, sales are down by 33.2% from (the pre-Ron Johnson) 1Q11.

–Cash on hand at the end of 4Q12 was $930 million.  During 1Q13, JCP borrowed an additional $850 million, by drawing half its beefed-up bank credit line.  As of May 4th, the company had cash of $821 million.  In other words, JCP has blown through the entire $850 million, plus another $109 million in three months.

lessons

1.  When things go wrong, they often have a runaway train character.  Ron Johnson joined JCP in late 2011.  Almost immediately, sales went into a tailspin.  By mid-2012 it was clear that something was desperately wrong and needed to be fixed.

But no one acts right away.  There’s always the temptation to wait just a little while longer in hopes the tide will change.

In addition, a company’s plans may be set in stone months in advance.  There are advertising campaigns, construction plans, and billions of dollars of (the wrong) merchandise in the stores–with more of the same on order.

In this case, nine months after starting to back away from the Johnson strategy, JCP is still losing cash at the rate of over $250 million a month.

2.  Cash tells the story, in a trouble company.  That’s cash flow, cash on hand and cash the company can borrow.

In the JCP case:

–cash flow is -$250 a month,

–cash on hand is $821 million, and

–borrowing power is $2.6 billion (the $1.75 billion loan arranged by Goldman plus the remaining $850 million in JCP’s bank credit line).

Assuming its banks don’t get cold feet and withdraw the credit line, JCP has total cash available of $3.4 billion.  That’s enough to sustain a cash drain at the 1Q13 rate for another 13 months.

3.  Riding coattails is a risky business.  The Financial Times website posted an article last evening titled “Tips from Wall Street gurus fail to reward faithful.”  In it, the FT looks at the performance of the hedge fund “best ideas” presented at last year’s Ira Sohn conference in New York.  In the aggregate, the tips underperformed the S&P 500.  Some, like JCP, were unbelievable clunkers.

Two factors:

–even the best equity managers are wrong 40% of the time, and

–some managers become celebrities mostly through their own aggressive marketing efforts rather than by having stellar performance.  Or they parlay a one- or two-year hot streak into an entire career.  Caveat emptor.

J C Penney (JCP) just borrowed $850 million…why?

April 16, 2013 By in Current Market Thoughts, Recent Market Action, Retail, Stock ideas, working capital Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the 8-k

Yesterday, JCP announced in an 8-K filed with the SEC that it has borrowed $850 million on its newly expanded $1.8 billion bank credit line   …even though it doesn’t really need the money right now.  It also said it’s looking for other sources of new finance, which I interpret as meaning finding someone to purchase new bonds or stock.

My guess is that as the company needs seasonal working capital finance it will borrow more on the credit line rather than deplete its cash balances, which should now amount to around $1.8 billion.  This despite the fact that paying the current 5.25% interest rate on the $850 million will cost the company $44.6 million a year.

Why do this?

We know that the Ackman/Johnson regime inflicted terrible damage on JCP.  Part of this is actual–the stuff about lost sales and profits that we can read in the company’s financial statements.  Part of it is psychological–we don’t know how deeply JCP is wounded, how long it will take for the company to heal, nor even how much healing is possible.

a psychological plus

By borrowing the money now, JCP is in a sense buying itself an insurance policy on the psychological/confidence front by establishing several things:

— it now has enough cash to be able to weather two more ugly years like 2012, rather than one.  This gives it much more breathing room to negotiate any asset disposals, to say nothing of getting customers back into the stores.

–it has lessened the possibility that its banks will withdraw or reduce the credit line if sales continue to deteriorate.  After all, they now have their $850 million that’s in JCP’s hands to protect.

–it demonstrates to suppliers that the company has ample cash to pay for merchandise.  JCP will likely get better payment terms with the money on the balance sheet than without it, although it’s not clear to me that payables still won’t shrink this year.   More important, in my view, is that suppliers won’t restrict either the quantity or selection of merchandise they deliver to JCP for fear they won’t be paid.

–it avoids the negative publicity (see my 2011 post on Eastman Kodak) that would likely have been generated were JCP to wait until it genuinely needed the funds, or until its banks might be getting cold feet.

so far, so good

So far, Wall Street is taking the move in stride.  The stock showed no adverse effect from the announcement.  And in pre-market trading today, it’s up.