thinkpad Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 Really ? At this price what assets do you have to protect your downside ? Zero. If earnings are bad LE can go very very low. Look at Shos : no debt, earnings almost to zero, and you have A discount of almost 50% on NCAV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kab60 Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 I am following but thought the latest Company presentation was fluffy and full of corporate BS. No idea what to make of new CEO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ni-co Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 At this price what assets do you have to protect your downside ? How about their brand? How about their insane margins? Why do thousands of people shop at Lands' End online and not elsewhere? All LE has to do is not to try to be the next Abercrombie and cash will keep rolling in. It's insane how little they have to invest into marketing. They have such loyal customers. I've had an online retail business myself and, believe me, you simply can't overestimate the value of such a brand in online retailing. It solves your number one problem: How do I attract people to my site and keep them coming back? This is literally the only problem an online retailer needs to solve. And solving it is extremely hard. I cannot imagine what it would cost to rebuild LE's brand and business from scratch today. But I'm very comfortable that it would take more than $750m. (Hard) assets don't protect your downside. They may protect a company from bankruptcy for a certain amount of time but they sure as hell don't protect you as a shareholder from losing a lot of money. JCP had assets, Sears has assets to no end but what they both have, too, is a huge cash engulfing overhead – which is exactly what LE does not have. What protects your downside is having a good business model. And I think LE has a great business model. LE has huge margins and trades at 0.5x revenue. What are people afraid of? That LE is going to half their revenues?! I'd bet that even then they'd still be profitable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elevensecsrt4 Posted October 9, 2015 Share Posted October 9, 2015 Interesting take on the Lands End purchase Ni-co. Are you still an owner? I briefly saw where it appeared ESL added some more LE shares or was that too a investment partnership distribution? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ni-co Posted October 9, 2015 Share Posted October 9, 2015 Interesting take on the Lands End purchase Ni-co. Are you still an owner? I briefly saw where it appeared ESL added some more LE shares or was that too a investment partnership distribution? At the moment I'm not. I couldn't resist taking the quick 30 percent after I'd bought it at around 22 and there are other better risk/reward bets out there momentarily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innerscorecard Posted October 10, 2015 Share Posted October 10, 2015 At this price what assets do you have to protect your downside ? All LE has to do is not to try to be the next Abercrombie and cash will keep rolling in. It's insane how little they have to invest into marketing. They tried to be the next J. Crew with Lands' End Canvas, and failed. The CEO is also an Italian high-fashion executive who is located in New York, not Wisconsin. I think the risk of missteps is there (of course that also means there is more upside, too). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innerscorecard Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 A Glassdoor corporate review: “They want to do well, but are mired by the past ” Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Dodgeville, WI Doesn't Recommend Negative Outlook I have been working at Lands' End full-time (More than a year) Pros There are some really bright people that are part of this organization. In the last couple years there has been an influx of top-tier talent brought in at top dollar to help try to drive Lands' End into the future. There are some exceptionally bright people that work in certain pockets. Work/life balance is pretty good in most areas of the company. They are pretty flexible with family schedules, and they have a lot of nice perks for employees like the fitness center. Oh, and they are a casual shop, though this really means 'dress-up-how-you-want-to' on the creative side of the business. Show Less Cons Things looked hopeful with a spinoff from Sears, but the upper management turmoil that has gone on for the last few years has left the company tailspun and floundering. Especially in the IT department, the influx of new talent and their ideas are met with violent opposition from the old school. It's very much the case of worlds colliding, past and future. They don't invest in professional development AT ALL. They expect any learning to be done on your own time and dollar, so it's no shock that a lot of people are really old school in their skill sets and management styles. The hangover from Sears and the layoff days is still around, and the mass exodus of the more market-attractive roles attests to the curmudgeon culture. If you haven't stewed in the cranky, antiquated, complacent environment for most of your career, as so many still there have, the IT culture is pretty hard to tolerate long-term. Progressive management is not a thing over there. Not all parts of the business are that bad, but things are not looking good. Show Less Advice to Management LE goes out into the market recruiting with the message that you are looking for innovative talent that wants to effect change and be invested. The message is that we want to find bright people, and give them autonomy...collaborate...let them leverage their talents. However, especially as it pertains to recruiting Millennial's, you get ahold of them, and don't seen to know what to do with them. Especially in the IT org, the old 'because I said so' micromanagement style is still rampant and the old school management processes prevail. It seems that a lot of folks that have been in the org for a long time are feeling threatened by change, and are lashing out trying to assuage their discomfort with change and their distrust of young talent by keeping a strangle-hold. Their are still too many people mired in the old ways of doing things, and unable to change or give autonomy to new talent for the company to truly execute their IT objectives, so they are just trudging along in inefficiency and low morale. As a result, we go out in the market paying top dollar to bring in talent, then it's just a total revolving door . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innerscorecard Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 Search engine queries (which would seem to be especially relevant for LE) are also trending down, according to Google Trends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scudbucket Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 Thanks for posting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
constructive Posted October 24, 2015 Share Posted October 24, 2015 How about their insane margins? They aren't actually insane at all. High gross margins are great if you're growing revenue. If revenue isn't growing, there's no real advantage to a business model that has low COGS costs and high SG&A costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innerscorecard Posted October 25, 2015 Share Posted October 25, 2015 I can't make heads or tails of Federica Marchionni's answers to questions during meetings and calls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ni-co Posted October 25, 2015 Share Posted October 25, 2015 I can't make heads or tails of Federica Marchionni's answers to questions during meetings and calls. Might this be partly a language issue (her English doesn't seem to be all that good and the SA transcript I saw also contained a lot of distorting errors, maybe due to her pronunciation)? Or was it because she didn't want to answer the questions with regard to capital allocation? Actually, I mostly liked what she said at the last conference call: They are concentrating their efforts on brand building. She wants to get away from being very promotional, concentrating more on their core strengths and enhancing the quality of their products. The men's collection was too fashionable, the women's collection was off-trend and the silhouettes not slim enough – especially compared to all the competitors. She hired new designers, a new merchandise and a new supply chain guy. She wants to focus on the bottom line and doesn't increase the marketing budget but wants to redirect the money into the brand building campaign. They want to invest the significant liquidity mainly back into the business, building a better website and shortening the lead time for new collections. You could read between the lines that she was quite annoyed not being able to influence the merchandise before Spring/Quarter 2016 because of the long lead time. All she could do is improve the website and redirect the marketing to the products that have been selling best traditionally. What this also means to me is that it's likely that the most important Christmas quarter will be bad as well. The real test will be the first half of 2016. Then most of the improvements will be in place. If the first two quarters of 2016 are bad as well it will be 100% her responsibility. Until then I'm going to wait and see (trying to keep in mind that there might be another opportunity to buy LE cheaply in Q1 2016). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innerscorecard Posted October 25, 2015 Share Posted October 25, 2015 Seems about right (you expressed it more clearly than she did...but it's true that language may be an issue). I've been intrigued enough to start studying the company, but at this point I think would like to wait either for the proof of results or the price to get cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ballinvarosig Investors Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 http://www.wsj.com/articles/lands-end-ceo-federica-marchionni-steps-down-1474890464 marchionni gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spekulatius Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 http://www.wsj.com/articles/lands-end-ceo-federica-marchionni-steps-down-1474890464 marchionni gone. The brand was always a bit bland, but has now become really stale in recent years. I used to buy at LE but switched to LLbean and brands like Columbia in recent years. LE needs to full reboot and a I don't think they have the cash available to completely overhaul their business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foreign Tuffett Posted September 27, 2016 Share Posted September 27, 2016 http://www.wsj.com/articles/lands-end-ceo-federica-marchionni-steps-down-1474890464 marchionni gone. Surprised it happened so quickly, but clearly she was a poor fit with the corporate culture. Land's End isn't (and shouldn't be) the fashion forward company she seemed to want to make it. It needs to embrace what it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BargainValueHunter Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 Berkowitz ups stake in LE to over 10%: http://www.marketfolly.com/2016/10/fairholme-capital-adds-to-lands-end.htm Per the filing, Fairholme now owns 10.5% of Lands End with over 3.35 million shares. This is an increase of 353,200 shares since the end of the second quarter when they owned 2.99 million shares. The filing was made due to activity on September 30th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sampr01 Posted October 19, 2016 Share Posted October 19, 2016 http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2016/10/18/delta-air-lines-unveils-lands-end-uniforms.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ballinvarosig Investors Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Ok. Short interest is still around 4m shares. Assuming Lampert/Berkowitz own 70% of the ~32m shares – that's still 40% of the float (9.6 days to cover). Shorting Lands' End seems crazy to me. I don't know who'd want to do that. Greenhaven are short. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5498841ce4b0311b8ddc012b/t/58148e2515d5dbcebabe377f/1477742119029/Q3+2016+FINAL.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DooDiligence Posted December 20, 2016 Share Posted December 20, 2016 Jerome Griffith; former head of Tumi, replaces Marchionni after Samsonite buys Tumi (Griffith will stay on as a non-executive director at Samsonite.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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