I hold WFD and, frankly, I am worried. I look at shopping malls everywhere (yes, I travel to the USA often) and note the drift away from the megamalls and back into "village" shopping areas. Two reasons I can see: it has now become just as arduous to access the shopping malls as it was in the CBD (parking, traffic, etc) - one of the drivers for shopping malls - and the offering is very vanilla.
Patronage at the malls will still be highly visible - after all not everyone can shop at specialty and boutique stores - but will it be enough to ensure a good return for the mall owners? I wonder. Of course, in all this we still see excitement at new malls, like Stratford in London, opening and there will always be a base demand.
On top of this is the exchange rate. Its a complete furphy that the A$ is now hurting WFD: it became focussed on the international market in mid 2014 (the "split" was 30 June 2014) when the $A was trading at around US$0.93 and WFD's SP was circa $7.50. As the aussie went down, WFD went up. At its peak (Feb - Apr, '15)the SP was around $10 (ignoring short term highs to $10.30+) and the aussie was US$0.76 - 78, about the same as now. Current price weakness is unlikely to have anything to do with the exchange rate and everything to do with sentiment.e
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