Saturday, March 7, 2009

Ann Taylor Stores - ANN

Ann Taylor Stores (ANN), one of my short picks for 2009, reported a set of pretty appalling results yesterday, including a staggering loss of $6.66 per share. This hardly came as a surprise to me, as I feel the company caters mostly to the section of the population most affected by the current economic climate. It is significantly more expensive than a number of discount retailers, but it is also far from high-end fashion. I don't see things improving for the company for some time yet as people seem to have significantly less disposable income available at present. Investors greeted the news by sending the stock price down 38%!

Prior to these results, Ann Taylor Stores (ANN) was the only one of my short picks to have posted a stock price gain for the year, now all of the picks are in negative territory.

Disclosure: At the time of writing the author did not hold shares in Ann Taylor Stores (ANN).

2 comments:

  1. Good commentary. I can see, after reading this, that ANN does tailor to the population that would cut back the most.

    What other things do you look at when searching for shorts?

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  2. Hi Jae Jun, thanks for stopping by the blog. You raised an interesting question there, I'll try to put together a post in the next few days covering some of the things I would look out for.

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