Bill Dreher
Bill Dreher
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The announcement by Neiman Marcus...makes us as concerned as we have ever been that this Christmas will be extremely lackluster. It appears now the high-end consumer is beginning to scale back their purchases, which does not bode well for the holiday season. This type of thing is clearly going to have an impact on other high-end retailers.
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I don't think it's a Wal-Mart problem. It's a demographic problem. If you were focused on the moderate-income sector, you were disappointed.
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On its own, a comp-store inventory increase of 2-to-5 percent is no big deal. But when you've got comp-store sales declines of closer to 10 percent, you're dealing with a possible 10-point spread, which we believe is going to cause retailers to push the promotional panic button earlier than they would have.
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While integration risk is always the greatest concern with mergers, we have a high comfort level that the (Federated) game plan is achievable.
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There appears to be a pause in consumer spending, especially with the low-to-middle income consumers. The slowing sales also counterbalance positive economic data that show rising income and confidence levels and oil prices coming down. As far as sales go, this is a period where the consumer is taking a break.
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There has been real concern for the last several months about hurricanes, about consumer sentiment, about gasoline inflation hurting consumer spending,
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We knew Sears was going to have some rough sledding ahead but what's obvious now is that it's going to be a lot rougher than anticipated,
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We're not out of the woods yet. Forty percent of holiday sales are wrapped up in the week before Christmas.
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We knew today was going to be a disaster. What surprises us was how bad it was was.
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We believe our competitors have shown irrational exuberance with Christmas forecasts, ... We believe the average consumer is worried about higher gasoline prices, jobs and doesn't believe he will benefit from the stock market. With this climate, if you're just a 'me-too' retailer, you'll be in a world of hurt. The department stores will suffer but the discounters Wal-Mart and Target will do well.
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It's pretty well accepted that the economy is gradually building momentum, and Kmart has declared bankruptcy,
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The news we got today was incrementally negative, even for the best operators out there. And clearly this does not bode well for a strong holiday season.
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You tend to mark down stuff when you're stuck,
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Even Wal-Mart, with their superior systems, their ability to analyze information, being able to predict sales down to the SKU and generate customer profiles, doesn't have good visibility of what's going on in 2001, which makes us concerned about the guys who don't have that ability,