Barnes & Noble

[bmichaud]

So April 23rd it's announced that Jana Partners established a 12% stake in BKS......

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2012/04/30/microsoft-to-invest-300-million-in-the-nook-e-reader-barnes-noble-shares-up-101/?partner=yahootix

 

....and not 7 days later BKS announces a deal with MSFT and the stock moves up 100%....

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/23/business/la-fi-jana-barnes-noble-20120423

 

 

Not to dump over someone's prowess, but come on, seriously? Major congrats but I'm still suspicious.

[CONeal]

Thought I saw somewhere that Whitney Tilson covered his short Last Tuesday and then went long.  Lucky little shit :-)

[bmichaud]

Tilson's results (and net worth for that matter - no he is not one of the super rich) should be MILES ahead of where they are given the amount of hand holding he receives. Unreal. 

[tombgrt]

It's the same old story as with Netflix and others.

 

On CNBC he said they now estimate conservative value at $30/share for BKS. But he was short (and made money) from a much lower price than $30. The joke is that their new estimated IV comes from ValueInvestorsClub, where a sum of parts valuation was done. Clearly it was a brilliant thesis that they just overlooked when they were still short two weeks ago...  ::) I would wonder about my stock picking skills if I did stuff like that, zero MoS.

 

 

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000087317

[CorpRaider]

Soon it might get cheap enough to be interesting and management might be rational enough to let someone else handle the nook...

[ItsAValueTrap]

Sometimes a cheaper way to buy Barnes and Noble would be through LMCA / Liberty Media.  Check out the LMCA thread.

 

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/lmca-liberty-media/100/

[CorpRaider]

Will do.  Thanks.  If they could just stop the bleeding in nook segment the thing is trading at about a 2x EV/E ratio.  I would feel a higher level of conviction with an activist leader who is ousting the management with extreme prejudice.  Even if paper book consumption slowly declines over the next 30 years, that's a ton of cash between now and then and they also sell other yuppie/intelligentsia focused goods, such as lattes.

[Mikenhe]

This is such a badly run company. Or more to the point it’s a bunch of badly run stores and called a company.

 

The nook is the future for them but the problem is that its run the same way as the rest of the store. In order the meet margins they try to bring in new (ie cheap) employees. Call them part time so they work a max of 19 hours a week and get no benefits. Then ask them to work 30 hours so that it’s a cheap work force. Often they have too many staff so instead of giving hours to those that need or want it they cut most of the staff back to a few hours a week in order to keep them on the books.

 

People are coming into stores with their own food and drink because nobody stops them.  People pull out books and magazines to read without paying and don’t put them back – or go as far as taking coupons that they want from magazines and fold papers of books they intent to go back and read later.

 

Parents let their kids run riot and trash books and dump stuff on the floor.

 

Teens hang out there and are loud and obnoxious – putting off paying customers while not buying anything themselves.

 

And the store managers do nothing about it – told be non confrontational and let people get on with it.

So instead of selling books and nooks the staff (of which there aren’t enough because you have to think of the bottom line – and management only looks upon staff as an expense) spend their time cleaning the floors and putting back books.

 

The total and utter lack of regard for the staff by management and their focus on the bottom line by cutting expense can only lead to further poor performance.  It needs a serious cleanup and senior management needs to get into stores and see whats happening (whereas no regional managers turn up with advance warning so the store can be cleaned up) and start changing their attitude then the downwards spiral will continue.

 

I have never worked for BKS nor do I hold any shares and until they sort the staffing problems out and stop the stores being used as playgrounds fr non customers then I’ll never hold any shares.

 

*sorry for the long winded rant – spent a bit of time at stores recently – and with a few staff and whats happening there is shocking. Management (al of them) need a good kick up the arse.