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.

The tire business did break even on a cash basis but not on a full-loaded cost basis, or the total costs incurred to run that business.

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...

Wal-Mart continues to show strong momentum and operating performance, … Its food and apparel sales did well, which fits in with our thesis that Wal-Mart is really taking on the supermarkets. By adding new apparel...

As far as core operations, there wasn’t much of an upside there.

We believe this will have a negative impact on February sales for the majority of our retailers as the much colder weather will likely impede store traffic, and sales of spring merchandise sets that are...

While integration risk is always the greatest concern with mergers, we have a high comfort level that the (Federated) game plan is achievable.

It appears that the greatest factor for our retailers slowdown up until now had been the unseasonably warm weather, and as soon as we got more seasonally appropriate temperatures it unleashed pent up demand.

The back-to-school season started with a bang and we’re expecting robust sales in September because the consumer appeared to be flooded with cash.

There’s very little excuse for anyone posting weak sales right now, … If that is happening, it because of company specific excuses. The macro environment overall is very strong. The first month of the quarter...

Consumers were not in the holiday spirit up until the last week of the holiday season, when there was a mad rush for the store, … And the big unknown is the result of that...

People are being much more rational with their expenditures. That’s why we’re seeing these discount price retailers generating strong customer traffic and solid sales increases. And we expect strong earnings increases from them.

It shows they’re in the ballpark as far as sales go.

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...

Historically, Wal-Mart has only been concerned about the consumer. But 12 years ago, Wal-Mart began to woo the investor and sponsored fieldtrips to their headquarters. These were tremendously successful,

It’s clear that the company is redoubling efforts to strengthen itself and build a competitive advantage. Anything that distracts the management from doing just that will be de-emphasized. The sale of its National Tire and...

There’s no point in chasing sales if you’re losing money on those sales.

[Retail sales have gone up and down all year, but we won’t fully understand what’s going on in the minds of American shoppers until the last Christmas gift has been unwrapped. The holiday shopping season...

Retailers that are not catering that well to the middle- and upper-income customers are going to have a tough time.

Investors have been skeptical about the health of the U.S. consumer, and will use this to take profits.

Department stores are already focusing on rejecting shipments from vendors that they ordered. They are also looking to promote inventory they already have in hand. As we get through the season, department stores are going...

The company endorsed consensus analysts’ estimates of a 15 percent EPS growth in the new fiscal year,

The sales results from the department and discount chains were mostly in line with expectations.

They are admitting they have very cloudy visibility on the very critical holiday season. What might be more significant to investors is that even though they had an admittedly superb second quarter, where are we...

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...

They’ve learned the lessons from last year and are intent upon not repeating the same mistakes.

There has been real concern for the last several months about hurricanes, about consumer sentiment, about gasoline inflation hurting consumer spending,

Discount stores have really become an increasing portion of consumers’ expenditures. Now there’s talk of fluctuating energy prices, job layoffs, and people are looking for the best value possible. So we believe the discount stores...

Wal-Mart’s EPS growth is twice that of the S&P. For the third consecutive year it has seen an increase in operating margins and we believe it still has tremendous growth opportunity over the next 5...

I think there’s a lot of confusion about the state of the consumer. We had weak numbers in January. February sales were pushed down by horrible weather, and now March could be weak because of...