Yes that it is ugly madamswer. My cursory glance at the numbers...

Yes that it is ugly madamswer. My cursory glance at the numbers for Masters didn't absorb that much detail. You are probably right, and they must have been still rolling out new stores even in FY15 which is not good. It is really about coming out of Masters with the smallest loss they can manage and move on, and things like exit costs, store maturity etc will come into it.

They still need to weigh it up carefully. My limited knowledge of retail, I was once told that it takes a new store about 2 years to get to 80% of its potential, and typically a new average store takes about 12 months to break even (although there is obviously a huge range between stores that break even almost straight away and stores that never break even). They must have quite a few duds to be losing that much money, or perhaps it is not being managed well. I find it hard to believe that they couldn't get the Masters business to a breakeven position within a couple of years, unless there is a fundamental problem I'm not aware of, such as they paid way too much for the sites and/or their leases are too costly and therefore their cost base is too high. A process of closing the worst stores and focusing on improving the remaining stores, should, in my opinion, make a breakeven position for Masters manageable within a reasonable time frame (I would suggest 2 years, 3 years tops). If that is achievable, that would be my preference, they could then sell the Masters business for probably around the amount of capital they poured into it, which would be a much better financial outcome than selling it for $1 and incurring the large exit costs. Obviously they would have a lot of data that we don't have, and perhaps that outcome is not as achievable as I think it should be (the increasing losses as you have noted may be suggesting otherwise, although I'm not sure how much of an impact newer stores are having on those losses).