SHLDQ - Sears Holdings Corp

[merkhet]

I am, in fact, saying that it's possible that cutting certain types of advertising spending might have absolutely no impact on sales volumes. As I said a little over a month ago:

 

I came across something interesting today in a Freakonomics podcast from May 14, 2014. (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519?mt=2&i=313081767)

 

Levitt talks about a consulting gig where he's studying advertising for a large company. The company was uncertain whether newspaper insert ads were adding value or not, and Levitt suggested that they hand over 40 markets to him so that he could run an experiment. He wanted to randomly assign 20 markets to a group with no newspaper inserts for three months and keep the other 20 markets the same. Sounds good, right?

 

The immediate response was "Are you crazy? We can't not advertise in 20 markets. We'll all get fired!" As luck would have it, it turns out that, the previous year, a summer intern screwed up a purchase order and accidentally forgot to order inserts for a big chunk of Pittsburgh for an entire summer. (Natural experiment!) So they had data on whether this had an effect -- so they studied the data and found that there was no impact whatsoever.

 

Levitt then said, that's great. So let's do a larger experiment and give me the 40 markets. Their response? "Are you crazy? We can't not advertise in 20 markets. The CEO will kill us!" And so despite having some insight that the newspaper inserts might not work, five years later, they're still spending close to a billion dollars putting inserts into newspapers.

 

My mind immediately snapped to Sears and how people seem to vilify ESL for experimentation when, in fact, not experimenting is significantly worse.

 

Go to the podcast from 19:20 to 24:45, and you'll hear the story.

[Scudbucket]

FWIW, I started hearing SYW radio ads within the past couple of weeks.  It's during the work commute, too.

 

What major market do you live in/near?

 

St. Louis

[heth247]

I am, in fact, saying that it's possible that cutting certain types of advertising spending might have absolutely no impact on sales volumes. As I said a little over a month ago:

 

Is the traditional Ad spending part of SGA? In Sears' recently presentation of their return to profitability plan, they are targeting a 2%~4% reduction of SGA ($7.9B), which leads to $150M~$300M incremental of EBITDA. I don't see they cutting down traditional Ad to zero anytime soon.

[texual]

This was a very crummy investment for me so far... but here's a toast to you guys from me. Here's to the next ten years!

 

I am convinced ESL just runs this thing for giggles now.

 

[LC]

All I have learned from this thread is that retail is so god damn hard. And anywhere else there are easier profits to be had.

[Luke 532]

All I have learned from this thread is that retail is so god damn hard. And anywhere else there are easier profits to be had.

 

True, but the long-term rewards for those that emerge as winners are so much greater in retail.  SHLD isn't, and never should have been, an "I'll make 50% and be happy" investment.  It's an investment with multi-bagger potential protected by a significant margin of safety.

[Liberty]

For those who can read French, here's a good summary of the bull thesis on SHLD by a top notch value investor from France:

 

http://club.berichcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Apart%C3%A9-de-lIF-Juin-2014.pdf

 

It almost makes me want to buy some SHLD, but I still think about it the same way I did a few months ago (50 pages ago in this thread, probably) when I wrote that if the thesis on SHLD is that it's going to compound value for a very long time and won't be a single "pop" back to intrinsic value, then I feel more comfortable waiting for the thesis to more visibly start working and then get on board even if I miss part of the ride.

 

In other words, if you bought Berkshire years after it was obvious things were working for Buffett, you still did fine. If Lampert is really going to extract tens of billions of value and reinvest in good stuff, it won't happen over a week and I should have time to reconsider; in the meantime, I can get the popcorn and watch from the sidelines without getting whiplash...

[Luke 532]

For those who can read French, here's a good summary of the bull thesis on SHLD by a top notch value investor from France:

 

http://club.berichcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Apart%C3%A9-de-lIF-Juin-2014.pdf

 

It almost makes me want to buy some SHLD, but I still think about it the same way I did a few months ago (50 pages ago in this thread, probably) when I wrote that if the thesis on SHLD is that it's going to compound value for a very long time and won't be a single "pop" back to intrinsic value, then I feel more comfortable waiting for the thesis to more visibly start working and then get on board even if I miss part of the ride.

 

In other words, if you bought Berkshire years after it was obvious things were working for Buffett, you still did fine. If Lampert is really going to extract tens of billions of value and reinvest in good stuff, it won't happen over a week and I should have time to reconsider; in the meantime, I can get the popcorn and watch from the sidelines without getting whiplash...

 

Thanks for providing that link.

 

However, how can one be confident it won't rise substantially in a short period of time (even overnight)?  The short interest is extremely high and there exists a very limited supply of shares to be bought... and you'd be competing with shorts who might be forced to place market orders.  Heck, there is precedent for a simple announcement of a REIT conversion to gap a stock 30% overnight as seen below...

 

I was recently caught in a short that gapped over night by 30% because of a reit conversion, on my list of risks for this short, I had never considered that.  The Company is PENN, we're talking about a single entity, special special purpose REIT conversion.  The market is hungry for yield and they really don't care what kind of asset it is.

 

I think with SHLD, one of the catalysts will always be a short squeeze.

 

Do I expect the stock to go gang-busters overnight?  No, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

 

I can totally understand the strategy of waiting until there are clearer signs that things are working, but the difference in share count that you have in your portfolio is huge even just on a modest jump from $38 to $50 (30% pop).  Long-term that's reducing your share count* by nearly 25% (on a $1M investment you'd have 20,000 shares instead of 26,000+).

 

*the reason I personally focus on share count is because I view SHLD as a truly long-term investment (hold for decades).  In my mind it's similar to a retirement account where you really don't care (at least I don't) what the dollar value of your retirement account is currently, you're more focused on the number of shares that you own.  Sure, you'd still be happy either way, but I think the first step in taking full advantage of the eventual SHLD compounding machine is to rack up as many shares as possible before it becomes obvious.

 

I say all this just to drive home the point that one should not be confident that the share price appreciation will be slow and steady, it is entirely possible it will have a huge gap in which nobody can buy shares between $38 and $50 (or $60 or $70 or $80).

[peridotcapital]

For those who can read French, here's a good summary of the bull thesis on SHLD by a top notch value investor from France:

 

http://club.berichcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Apart%C3%A9-de-lIF-Juin-2014.pdf

 

It almost makes me want to buy some SHLD, but I still think about it the same way I did a few months ago (50 pages ago in this thread, probably) when I wrote that if the thesis on SHLD is that it's going to compound value for a very long time and won't be a single "pop" back to intrinsic value, then I feel more comfortable waiting for the thesis to more visibly start working and then get on board even if I miss part of the ride.

 

In other words, if you bought Berkshire years after it was obvious things were working for Buffett, you still did fine. If Lampert is really going to extract tens of billions of value and reinvest in good stuff, it won't happen over a week and I should have time to reconsider; in the meantime, I can get the popcorn and watch from the sidelines without getting whiplash...

 

Thanks for the link (and thank goodness for Google Translator).

 

The guy lost me when he claimed Sears' owned real estate is worth $55 billion and then compared Shop Your Way favorably to Amazon, Facebook, and LinkedIn. That interview makes the Baker Street presentation look downright pessimistic. :)

[texual]

Wow where did you find this? Super interesting. I've never used Google Translator but I just gave it a shot and it seems the whole thing is now in English so I'll read it over. Thanks. Does anyone else recall a foreign investor being interested in SHLD before?

[Liberty]

Thanks for providing that link.

 

However, how can one be confident it won't rise substantially in a short period of time (even overnight)?  The short interest is extremely high and there exists a very limited supply of shares to be bought... and you'd be competing with shorts who might be forced to place market orders.  Heck, there is precedent for a simple announcement of a REIT conversion to gap a stock 30% overnight as seen below...

 

That's why I say IF the thesis is that this will be a long-term compounder and not just a single pop back to IV.

 

If once it gets going it's expected to be doing 20%/year for 10-20 years or whatever, it doesn't matter that much if I miss year 1, even if it's the best year.

 

But if it pops 100-200% and then kind of flatline, obviously I'd have missed it and oh well. I'm ready to take that risk (can't win them all).

[Liberty]

Thanks for the link (and thank goodness for Google Translator).

 

The guy lost me when he claimed Sears' owned real estate is worth $55 billion and then compared Shop Your Way favorably to Amazon, Facebook, and LinkedIn. That interview makes the Baker Street presentation look downright pessimistic. :)

 

Yeah, he's super bullish. He does give a wide range of potential values to the RE, but he seems way more bullish on SYW than even most raging bulls here. But even if you discount that, his sums of the parts analysis still gives a big margin of safety... But even with that, it's still not the kind of business I want to own now. I'm done with ugly. Maybe it'll turn into something I want if the "Lampert turns it around, extracts tons of value, and makes it his vehicle" thesis is true, but it's been a lot of years of much smoke and little fire so I don't feel the need to hurry (not to minimize the important structural work that has been done over the past 5-7 years, but it's still not exactly a FCF machine).

[Liberty]

Wow where did you find this? Super interesting. I've never used Google Translator but I just gave it a shot and it seems the whole thing is now in English so I'll read it over. Thanks. Does anyone else recall a foreign investor being interested in SHLD before?

 

These guys used to have a free site of value investing in French, and they've recently started a paying investment club with lots of analyses and interviews and such. I'm not a member, but they have some free materials like that (I posted another one in the LMCA thread about the Malone complex of businesses).

 

The URL of their site is at the end of the PDF (don't want to seem too promotional about it).

[Myth465]

I don't see how you can argue if we don't get on the ship the boat could leave the port in a hurry.

People have been sitting on the docs for 10 years, and have been mostly right.

 

You are too focused on the stock price. No one knows if the model will work, what people are saying is show me a working model even at a more expensive price point and I will invest. I think that's logical. You can always invest in Coke or BRK because the model works. You may pay too high if you buy at the wrong PE but the model works.

 

I don't know if the model works here. No valuation takes into account cash flows. They are all based on assets which may or may not be liquidated.

Perhaps it will work well, but I don't think people are at risk at missing the boat. If the model works you can get on at a later date and still have an adequate return.

 

The real question is what happens to your capital if the model continues to not work.....

[Luke 532]

People have been sitting on the docs for 10 years, and have been mostly right.

 

Why would that impact a decision whether to invest or not today?  Rear-view vs. windshield.

 

Perhaps it will work well, but I dont think people are at risk at missing the boat. If the model works you can get on at a later date and still have an adequate return.

 

I don't think many SHLD bulls would be satisfied with adequate returns (assuming you mean adequate as beating the market by a little bit).

 

The real question is what happens to your capital if the model continues to not work.....

 

I'm confident in the margin of safety present in the real estate, brands, etc.

 

Again, I can understand people wanting to wait for more clarity.  I just think having a substantially higher share count is well worth the near-term uncertainty.

[Myth465]

People have been sitting on the docs for 10 years, and have been mostly right.

 

Why would that impact a decision whether to invest or not today?  Rear-view vs. windshield.

 

Perhaps it will work well, but I dont think people are at risk at missing the boat. If the model works you can get on at a later date and still have an adequate return.

 

I don't think many SHLD bulls would be satisfied with adequate returns (assuming you mean adequate as beating the market by a little bit).

 

The real question is what happens to your capital if the model continues to not work.....

 

I'm confident in the margin of safety present in the real estate, brands, etc.

 

Again, I can understand people wanting to wait for more clarity.  I just think having a substantially higher share count is well worth the near-term uncertainty.

 

Fair enough.

We just need time to prove that out.

 

You could be right, I want to see a decent business model first, and a manager with the guts to liquidate if he cant present a decent model.

I think it could work out well for both of us.

[TeddyLampert]

To paraphrase Charlie Munger: "learn from other people's investment mistakes"

 

To paraphrase Mohnish Pabrai: "paraphrasing Munger, learn from other people's mistakes"

 

With that said, here's what Pabrai had this to say about Sears in his 2011 annual meeting:

 

We lost money on Sears.

 

We made an investment in Sears, Sears Holdings, and we exited.  We lost maybe somewhere between a third and a half of the money we had put in.  There are many smart people invested in Sears.  It’s run by a very smart guy, Eddie Lampert, who cares a lot about shareholder value.  I missed a very simple thing in Sears.

 

If you do any kind of liquidation analysis on Sears, you would end up with a situation where you would say that the stock at present prices is cheap because they have so much in assets in terms of their real estate.  It is not cheap from a going concern cash flow perspective, because the business is in a very severe decline and it will just accelerate in its decline.  Just to take a show of hands, how many of you have visited a Sears store in the last three months?  We have a few guys, like four or five guys out of 100.  If I had asked the same question five years ago it would have been quite different, and 10 years ago it would have been very different.  We’re seeing a pretty precipitous decline in folks who are regular Sears shoppers.  You’ll also notice that the ones who raised their hands have mostly a lot of white hair.  It’s not as if Sears can bury their old shoppers,

and get new ones in.  That’s not happening.

 

What I missed with Sears is that between the assets and monetizing the assets through a liquidation, which is where you would make the money, sits some 200,000 employees.  I don’t see any way that you can ever go from A to B in a manner that would be profitable for the shareholders.

 

Eddie is a very smart guy, and I drank the Kool Aid and bought the stock.  But we finally decided that we were wrong about that investment and we added that to a checklist.  That is, just because something has a liquidation value that’s more, you need other things.  Sears has basic problems such as competitive advantage, basic problems with a moat, basic problems with the whole Target, Amazon, Wal-Mart, the other big box guys eating into their space in every which way.  Coupled with all that is high unemployment and the economy going down.  That’s an example of one where we lost money and we learned a few things and hopefully we won’t repeat that again.

 

 

[Myth465]

To paraphrase Charlie Munger: "learn from other people's investment mistakes"

 

To paraphrase Mohnish Pabrai: "paraphrasing Munger, learn from other people's mistakes"

 

With that said, here's what Pabrai had this to say about Sears in his 2011 annual meeting:

 

We lost money on Sears.

 

We made an investment in Sears, Sears Holdings, and we exited.  We lost maybe somewhere between a third and a half of the money we had put in.  There are many smart people invested in Sears.  It’s run by a very smart guy, Eddie Lampert, who cares a lot about shareholder value.  I missed a very simple thing in Sears.

 

If you do any kind of liquidation analysis on Sears, you would end up with a situation where you would say that the stock at present prices is cheap because they have so much in assets in terms of their real estate.  It is not cheap from a going concern cash flow perspective, because the business is in a very severe decline and it will just accelerate in its decline.  Just to take a show of hands, how many of you have visited a Sears store in the last three months?  We have a few guys, like four or five guys out of 100.  If I had asked the same question five years ago it would have been quite different, and 10 years ago it would have been very different.  We’re seeing a pretty precipitous decline in folks who are regular Sears shoppers.  You’ll also notice that the ones who raised their hands have mostly a lot of white hair.  It’s not as if Sears can bury their old shoppers,

and get new ones in.  That’s not happening.

 

What I missed with Sears is that between the assets and monetizing the assets through a liquidation, which is where you would make the money, sits some 200,000 employees.  I don’t see any way that you can ever go from A to B in a manner that would be profitable for the shareholders.

 

Eddie is a very smart guy, and I drank the Kool Aid and bought the stock.  But we finally decided that we were wrong about that investment and we added that to a checklist.  That is, just because something has a liquidation value that’s more, you need other things.  Sears has basic problems such as competitive advantage, basic problems with a moat, basic problems with the whole Target, Amazon, Wal-Mart, the other big box guys eating into their space in every which way.  Coupled with all that is high unemployment and the economy going down.  That’s an example of one where we lost money and we learned a few things and hopefully we won’t repeat that again.

 

 

Good post Teddy.

 

People in both camps have been saying the same thing for literally 8 years.

I dont know how long one's time horizon needs to be. Its almost like religion. It just works on faith. I dont know who is right, but will keep cash on hand, in my pocket.

 

I look forward to the day when this turns, or falls on its face. I hope everyone makes money, but it will be nice to have a conclusion to a song that has been playing for a decade. Till then I will be watching.

[Liberty]

People have been sitting on the docs for 10 years, and have been mostly right.

 

Why would that impact a decision whether to invest or not today?  Rear-view vs. windshield.

 

I think it can matter if the thesis has been "any day now, you'll see" for a decade.

 

The windshield has been foggy for a long while...

[TeddyLampert]

Here's some more. From the 2009 AM:

 

Another, even dumber, mistake than the first one was an investment in a company you might have heard of, might even have shopped with at some point in history, Sears. We first bought it in 2007 for over $135 a share, and sold it, actually, on my birthday in 2009 for about $68 or so per share. Basically we ended up with a 60 percent loss. We invested about $67 million across the funds and lost about 60 percent of the capital we put into Sears. The dumb thing here is that my first book, Mosaic, has a chapter on why you should never, ever invest in a retailer. I wrote that chapter myself and I strongly believe in it. 

 

So I looked at Sears and K-mart and Eddie Lampert and all his adventures with the company, and I’ve always taken a pass because I hated the business. But in 2007, I looked at it again, and I said, "You know, the asset base that he has to work with is very significant." Eddie is a very, very smart investor. He compounded at north of 30 percent, I think, before his Sears fiasco. He still has a very impressive long-term record. So I looked at Sears and I said, "You know, maybe I should not think of it as a retailer; I should think of it as a collection of assets. What would happen if I converted those assets and put the money in Eddie Lampert’s hands?"

 

Sears has a very substantial amount of assets, in the sense that they’ve got a huge amount of stores, brands, and services. In fact, Craftsman, Kenmore, Diehard, for example -- Sears doesn't manufacture any of those brands. They’re all manufactured by third parties. Sears has massive sales of those brands, so they are quite valuable.   

 

But the obvious problem is that you cannot monetize those assets, and that’s what I should have seen. Sears has a whole bunch of these 100-year leases at way below market. They’re used to going in as the anchor tenant in all these shopping malls, where they get pretty much whatever terms they want. So their real estate holdings have a significant amount of value, and the company is probably significantly undervalued today from that perspective. 

 

We’re in a situation in the U.S. today where we are over-retailed, over-malled, have more square footage than we need and probably more square footage than we will need for a long time to come. The ability to monetize is very, very limited. It’s very, very limited, even in good times. 

 

The key issue Lampert has is that between him and the assets sit 324,000 employees, and the only way you can get to the assets is if those 324,000 employees don’t exist.  But they're not leaving any time soon. Another issue is that Sears is a business that does not have, in my opinion, a defensible niche. It’s kind of lost between Wal-Mart and Target, so it’s basically doomed. The retail business is highly unlikely to turn around. And the retail business is certainly not going to turn around with real estate being the way it is today; that’s not going to be a play for a while.

 

And the third piece is that Sears has these 300,000 employees, and what is Lampert going to do with them? He can try closing one store at a time, like he’s been doing, but it’s going to take decades to try to get away. Warren said it perfectly, when management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it's the reputation of the business that remains intact. So that’s Mr. Lampert’s story. And I just kick myself for even going there because I should have seen it, quite obviously. So we ended up with a pretty significant loss.

 

 

To paraphrase Charlie Munger: "learn from other people's investment mistakes"

 

To paraphrase Mohnish Pabrai: "paraphrasing Munger, learn from other people's mistakes"

 

With that said, here's what Pabrai had this to say about Sears in his 2011 annual meeting:

 

We lost money on Sears.

 

We made an investment in Sears, Sears Holdings, and we exited.  We lost maybe somewhere between a third and a half of the money we had put in.  There are many smart people invested in Sears.  It’s run by a very smart guy, Eddie Lampert, who cares a lot about shareholder value.  I missed a very simple thing in Sears.

 

If you do any kind of liquidation analysis on Sears, you would end up with a situation where you would say that the stock at present prices is cheap because they have so much in assets in terms of their real estate.  It is not cheap from a going concern cash flow perspective, because the business is in a very severe decline and it will just accelerate in its decline.  Just to take a show of hands, how many of you have visited a Sears store in the last three months?  We have a few guys, like four or five guys out of 100.  If I had asked the same question five years ago it would have been quite different, and 10 years ago it would have been very different.  We’re seeing a pretty precipitous decline in folks who are regular Sears shoppers.  You’ll also notice that the ones who raised their hands have mostly a lot of white hair.  It’s not as if Sears can bury their old shoppers,

and get new ones in.  That’s not happening.

 

What I missed with Sears is that between the assets and monetizing the assets through a liquidation, which is where you would make the money, sits some 200,000 employees.  I don’t see any way that you can ever go from A to B in a manner that would be profitable for the shareholders.

 

Eddie is a very smart guy, and I drank the Kool Aid and bought the stock.  But we finally decided that we were wrong about that investment and we added that to a checklist.  That is, just because something has a liquidation value that’s more, you need other things.  Sears has basic problems such as competitive advantage, basic problems with a moat, basic problems with the whole Target, Amazon, Wal-Mart, the other big box guys eating into their space in every which way.  Coupled with all that is high unemployment and the economy going down.  That’s an example of one where we lost money and we learned a few things and hopefully we won’t repeat that again.

 

[oddballstocks]

Wow where did you find this? Super interesting. I've never used Google Translator but I just gave it a shot and it seems the whole thing is now in English so I'll read it over. Thanks. Does anyone else recall a foreign investor being interested in SHLD before?

 

These guys used to have a free site of value investing in French, and they've recently started a paying investment club with lots of analyses and interviews and such. I'm not a member, but they have some free materials like that (I posted another one in the LMCA thread about the Malone complex of businesses).

 

The URL of their site is at the end of the PDF (don't want to seem too promotional about it).

 

I used to read the free site, they had some good stuff on there.  Sometimes you can google and find discussion threads that are hidden behind a login, yet somehow exposed to Google. 

 

There are a few French value investing sites that put out some really good material.  SHLD would solidly fall into the category of 'daubasses' the French for cigar-butt/junk stocks.  If you Google "daubasses sears holdings" you'll find that Sears has made quite the round on French value sites. 

[zenith]

with respect to Pabrai, the price you pay determines the value you get. Everything has a price at which you would buy, sell or hold.

At the price he paid, it was a sell, at todays price, you can argue differently.

 

[TeddyLampert]

with respect to Pabrai, the price you pay determines the value you get. Everything has a price at which you would buy, sell or hold.

At the price he paid, it was a sell, at todays price, you can argue differently.

 

Your comment makes an assumption: that there is in fact significant value that shareholders will eventually receive. Pabrai doesn't disagree there is value. His point is that it's just never going to be unlocked no matter how talented the real Teddy is. Pabrai's point is that with Sears, the value or margin of safety from a liquidation is illusory because the employees get between the investors and the assets. It's a valuable insight that he had to learn the hard way.

[heth247]

with respect to Pabrai, the price you pay determines the value you get. Everything has a price at which you would buy, sell or hold.

At the price he paid, it was a sell, at todays price, you can argue differently.

 

Your comment makes an assumption: that there is in fact significant value that shareholders will eventually receive. Pabrai doesn't disagree there is value. His point is that it's just never going to be unlocked no matter how talented the real Teddy is. Pabrai's point is that with Sears, the value or margin of safety from a liquidation is illusory because the employees get between the investors and the assets. It's a valuable insight that he had to learn the hard way.

 

But Pabrai made all those remarks before SYW, before Eddie closing hundreds of store, and started to rent out spaces, before spin off of SHOS, LE, etc.

 

Things are changing. And there is no such thing as "impossible". If it is needed, asset value can be unlocked or liquidated.

[TeddyLampert]

with respect to Pabrai, the price you pay determines the value you get. Everything has a price at which you would buy, sell or hold.

At the price he paid, it was a sell, at todays price, you can argue differently.

 

Your comment makes an assumption: that there is in fact significant value that shareholders will eventually receive. Pabrai doesn't disagree there is value. His point is that it's just never going to be unlocked no matter how talented the real Teddy is. Pabrai's point is that with Sears, the value or margin of safety from a liquidation is illusory because the employees get between the investors and the assets. It's a valuable insight that he had to learn the hard way.

 

But Pabrai made all those remarks before SYW, before Eddie closing hundreds of store, and started to rent out spaces, before spin off of SHOS, LE, etc.

 

Things are changing. And there is no such thing as "impossible". If it is needed, asset value can be unlocked or liquidated.

 

Number of Employees

 

FY2014 226000

FY2013 246000

FY2012 264000

FY2011 312000

FY2010 290000

FY2009 291000

FY2008 302000

FY2007 352000

FY2006 355000

 

Using the recent run rate of what looks like 20K employee/yr attrition, the simple math is that it'd take 10 years to reduce headcount. I guess if you want to be aggressive, you could assume 5 years (AMZN has around 120K employees). This is unscientific ballpark-type analysis, but it's just pointing out that it's more likely than not that the liquidation story will take place over years, not months.