re: cdo not meeting sales target ?? - sanddune Hi Sanddune,I...

re: cdo not meeting sales target ?? - sanddune Hi Sanddune,

I think that you are right in being cautious with CDO at the minute (remember they do more than sell shoes though). The financial year for them ends at end of January so based on that they should report their full year AFTER other retailers have reported their half year - unless they give some 'guidance' before that. This being the case then might be best to stand aside for now and see where we might be in the retail cycle based on the other retailers half year reports and then get a feel to market sentiment to retailers?

The best performing retailers have all done very well in share price appreciation - the ones that meet my mimimum financial performance criteria in the pure "Retailing" Industry class are CDO, NBL, JBH, DJS, RCL, HWI, HVN, REB, CCV, FAN, ARP, ANC and APE.

In the subclass of "Apparel Retail" only CDO and NBL make the grade.

I believe profits measured by eps growth, operating margins and return on equity and return on assets are far more important than sales. In fact if you look at the historic performance of CDO you will see that sales revenue GROWTH in fact have been very small (even negative in 2001) - yet the share price has gone up considerably. However over the same period the eps growth, operating margin growth and return on asset growth has been exceptional (I can list if you want), while the dividend growth has been about 30% COMPOUNDING over the past 4 years.

Only point I make is that sales growth is not that great a signal - if sales growth is high while other measures of growth is also high - then fantastic - even better!!

All the best, it is on my radar as it is has retraced to nearly the 26 week ema now. But like you I am cautious and will wait until after reporting season - it might only take one segment of their conglomerate of businesses to slow it down while fully priced for a retailer.