No sentiment here, just learning - currently via forum comment and historic media reports.
When things hit the bottom it seems to me the next step is either death or recovery .
And sometimes when things hit the bottom company accountants decide to push all the bad news through at once so as to clear the decks for better times.
Has this been happening at Myer?
The Age six months ago noted dumping old stock at bargain basement prices and sniffed at new energy ahead.
Spare a thought for Myer chief executive John King. He’s due to present the struggling department store’s results for the first six months of the financial year on Thursday.
On Friday, shares in the company, one of the country’s largest retailers, hit all-time lows.
But some Myer staff have become particularly wary lately, with Myer’s Bourke Street HQ welcoming consultants from the Great American Group over the last week. Great American describes itself as a “leading provider of asset disposition solutions and valuation … services”.
In November it was appointed to liquidate luxury New York department store Barneys.
Myer’s largest shareholder, Premier Investments billionaire Solomon Lew, has been critical of the store’s old stock, describing it as something that “belongs in the Salvation Army”.
For a while, it seemed King was on the same page. At his first earning call since taking over from Richard Umbers in 2018, he said he hated the clearance floors. But, he said, it would take much of the year to rid them from the company’s chain of stores. But forget the Salvation Army. Last week this column’s correspondents spotted bargain-basement offers all over Myer’s Melbourne and Sydney flagship stores. Liz Cambagewomen's shoes at $5 – a steep markdown from the recommended $249.95.
Is King about to slash the value of Myer’s inventory? As things stand, there is still $347 million of stock on the books. A Myer spokesman confirmed Great American had been engaged to “assist with efficiently clearing inventory” at closing stores and with “the exit of the clearance floor concept”. “This work has concluded,” he said.
Still, things aren’t all looking bleak. Was that Myer womenswear manager Patricia Priolo we spotted leading the department store’s buying team for a tour of Stockholm last week?
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