They find themselves in the same position as many others did last year at this time, because, their dopey CEO pushed new expensive marketing campaigns rather than doing what needed to be done to straighten out the business.
Was a tough stock this year through playing the bottom buying/selling 10K shares holding my core I have been able to bring down cost to about $2.13 per share thus far, will probably sell on a pop and take the loss then look to get back in late Jan/Feb personally.
They find themselves in a unique position and the first way to restore confidence in the business and future is to find a no nonsense "business" person to run J. Jill not a social justice warrior more worried about righting social slights rather than running a successful business would be the best move going forward.
That last CEO has wreaked havoc at every company she has been with with her social crusades' rather than business acumen before this floundering she had helped totally destroy Lane Bryant/Catherine's which they are just now coming out of the wilderness with still some work to be done. She got them nationwide attention for all the wrong reasons as she did with J.Jill spending money on ridiculous ad campaigns.
From their most recent CC...………..sound familiar to a Franny type deal or what?
Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $17 million in cash, inventory at the end of the quarter was up 3.3% to $81.4 million versus $78.8 million last year. This level of inventory is still too high, but does represents a sequential improvement compared to end of second quarter. Looking forward through efforts taken earlier this year, we were able to impact the preseason buys [ph] related to receipt landing late in the fourth quarter. This is a critical step toward rightsizing inventory levels as we enter 2020. Regarding real estate, we opened four stores during the third quarter, bringing total store count to 290. Finally, capital expenditures were $5.6 million.
Too much old inventory, to many opening f stores when they should have been closing dead stores and focusing on righting the ship, clearing out useless execs who had zero business sense and were more in line with a Berkely mindset when it came to business. And those things are just starters so much needs to be done here as it was ignored and they find themselves going into 2020 where others found themselves going into 2019, ridiculous how these sorry arse CEOs continually can just wreck companies and find jobs is beyond me, and not some cheap paying job either they make millions time after time and yet always seem to land a new cushy gig. I will be looking for where this newly unemployed CEO lands next and I will fins a nice sweet spot and short the dog shit out of it, here reputation will precede itself and it should be a safest short in the market.
I will e watching how this unfolds going forward, and digging through and getting to the heart of things including debt and seeing if there indeed could be light at the end of the tunnel, this very well could be something nice to get into messing with at least flipping it wise as it is held at the bottom for a few Q's till serious results are shown, but, a winner it could still be in a 12-18 month time frame and a rather big one, will just have to see.
I see the thing maybe getting pushed hard by shorty in the coming 2 months and am guessing here, I see could have bottom touches of .65-.70 as they have much cash I believe I don't see it falling below cash especially in the middle of Xmas and the loser gone, they can at least save some of this holiday season...………..HINT to new CEO start selling old inventory and new missteps NOW and start looking for a gangbuster winter/Spring line, good place to start lose some junk, raise some cash and for heaven sake quit opening stores and start closing 20-30 losers.
JMHO
For the fourth quarter, we expect total comparable sales to decrease between 8% and 10%, total net sales will decrease between 5% and 7%. Gross margin will decrease about 400 basis points year-over-year, interest expense for the quarter will be approximately $4.5 million, net EPS is expected to be a loss of between $0.14 and $0.16 compared to earnings of $0.05 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018. And lastly, we expect to open one and close four stores ending quarter with 287 stores. And for the full year, we now expect total comparable sales to decrease 5% to 6%, total net sales to decrease 3% to 4%, gross margin to decrease about 350 basis points year-over-year and interest expense to be about flat to fiscal 2018 levels.
Closing 4 stores is okay, but, but opening zero stores for the next 12 months and closing some 10 losers per Q would be more prudent IMHO.
Peace out.
