My infatuation with retail shorts is aided greatly by the collapse in auto retailers. Here, for instance, is my first post about shorting O’Reilly. It has fallen 35% in the half-year since that post. Of course, in typical Sloper fashion, instead of thanking me effusively for a great idea offering for free, I get this………
Lifetime equity highs across the board, but devil-may-care, I’m still shorting whatever looks good. A new one I’d like to offer you is below – Dollar Tree (where all bears have to buy their clothes now, given the past eight years):
University Avenue in Palo Alto sparkles at night with trees illuminated with carefully-placed lights by the thousands. The street has been around as long as the town, and in the year 2017, it is a veritable Rodeo Drive, lined with expensive retail stores, wealthy citizens, and dreams of avarice. You hardly ever see anyone wearing business clothes here – – anyone so doing would be rightly perceived as an out-of-town rube – – but it is on this street that companies such as Google and Paypal got their start and the recipients of technology riches shop, eat, and gather.
I have written about my town, Palo Alto, many times here on the Slope of Hope (a sampling can be found by clicking here), and these posts tend to focus on its rapidly-escalating real estate prices. I personally think we’re past the top at this point, since I’ve noticed the For Sale signs in my neighborhood are actually just sitting there. It used to be that houses sold instantly. At this point, I’m noticing the signs lingering for weeks. Something has changed.
In spite of this, I noticed something on my regular early morning dog walk that I wanted to mention. In the twilight of 5:30 a.m., I noticed a small home around the corner from mine had a For Sale sign. I had long noticed this little house, because it was on a surprisingly large lot, almost completely devoid of anything but squirrels, and it was a cute little cottage. Having seen the sign, I was curious what they were asking. Two million? Three million, perhaps?
Inflation, bad economics, and slower consumer spending have hit even the nation’s most affordable retail stores – Family Dollar.
On Wednesday, 13 March Dollar Tree announced its fourth-quarter earnings, and despite the revenue growth over recent months, the company announced that it’s planning on closing nearly 1,000 of its Family Dollar-owned stores.
Back in 2015, Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in a $8.5 billion deal in an attempt to create a coup de grace that would challenge nearest discount competitors Dollar General and Walmart.
Unfortunately, Dollar Tree had to learn these lessons the hard way, following the acquisition and the difficulty of having to rebuild the reputation of the downtrodden Family Dollar brand that has been ridiculed with bad publicity and increasing competition within an already slow consumer market.
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