When I think of the Jos. A. Bank (JOSB), I think of Yogi Berra’s saying “Nobody goes there because it is too crowded.”
Only in the case of JOSB, it sounds like this: “EVERYBODY goes there because it is NOT crowded.” As most men who shop there will attest, you are lucky to see and handful [...]

Reader asked me a question about Joseph A. Bank’s profit margins, as a follow up to my early JOSB analysis.
Vitaliy,Thanks for your thoughts on Jos. A. Banks (JOSB). In you book, Active Value Investing, you speak about the reversion to the mean in net profit margins. JOSB’s net profit margins have grown from under 1% [...]

I tell you, every time I talk to someone who has shopped at Jos. A. Bank (and had a great experience by the way), has seen company’s commercial on TV, or simply read the company’s quarterly earnings report (key word here is earnings, not losses), I have to pinch myself to remind myself that the [...]

Here is a link (opens PDF) to a 9 page analysis I did of American Express (AXP).  Warning: it is a bit dry.  I was going to present American Express at Value Investing Congress in Pasadena, but the stock ran up and exhausted a good portion of margin of safety.  
Amex is one of the [...]

I was interviewed by Kiplinger about Jos. A. Bank (JOSB), my favorite retail stock I presented (download PDF of my presentation) at Value Investing Congress in Pasadena.  This is probably the most contrarian stock I ever owned – 93% of the float is short.  

Jos A. Bank (JOSB) reported decent numbers yesterday: sales grew 10%. It’s not a blow out number but a respectable number for this environment. Profit margins have expanded as corporate expenses are leveraged across a larger store base, driving earnings growth to 27%.

See an article I recently wrote here. In this piece, I am arguing that yesterday’s selloff is not a watershed event and basically a non event. Jeff Macke called the article a very Russian one, when I inquired why he explained “My ancestors ate frozen wood while staving off Napoleon. 300 points doesn’t scare me.”
But [...]

The Joseph A. Banks (JOSB) selling machine is kicking on all cylinders – yesterday’s quarterly numbers were proof of that (see article I wrote for Market Watch).

I wrote an a short post Great Job Bob!, this is a responce to to reader’s comments on that post.

You wrote about Home Depot (HD):

“…need to separate between the analysis of a company and a stock?”

Who are you kidding with this philosophical dribble? The CEO is ‘directly’ accountable to share holders for value, hence the generous compensation. To claim the stock was “overpriced” since 2000 is laughable but not laudable.

Before you suggest (again) a bonus for “ole Bobbie” consider the shareholders’ ROI…or would that be “just plain silly?”

Scott

Scott,

A CEO’s responsibility is to create shareholder value. But a CEO’s job is to achieve that through earnings and increasing the moat around the increasing return on capital, growing business; not through stock manipulation. In the late 1990s, Home Depot’s stock was overpriced – that is not CEO’s fault. Even if Bob Nardelli was the CEO then (though he was not), the blame goes to overexcited investors. The CEO was not the person who drove Home Depot’s stock to ridiculous valuation – investors were.

Jos. A. Bank (Nasdaq: JOSB) has reported its second-quarter numbers, and they aren’t good — they’re great!

To start with, sales were up 20.8%, and gross and operating margins improved, mainly driven by maturation of the company’s fairly new store base. But the Jos. A. Bank story is not about growth — it always had plenty of that. It is about inventories, and they were the bright, shining star of this quarter. Specifically, inventories increased only 11.7% over the second quarter last year. So why is that great news?

To answer that question, it’s necessary to understand the issues surrounding Jos. A. Bank. First, it has double the inventory days (a measure of how long it takes to convert inventory into sales) of its closest competitor, Men’s Wearhouse (NYSE: MW), and second, it had a terrible first quarter due to too much seasonal inventory. I have written two long articles on the first issue, so let me address the second issue here.

Investing isn’t for the faint of heart. A Foolish investor must be strong enough to change his or her mind when a stock’s underlying facts change — or hang on tight, even in the face of a share-price decline, when they don’t. I wrote a very favorable article about Jos. A. Bank (Nasdaq: JOSB) about a month ago, and I wouldn’t change a single line in that article, despite news that the retailer’s same-store sales for August fell 6.1%.

Jos. A. Bank (JOSB) is up close to 6% after reporting truly unbelievable sales numbers for July: same store sales were up 16% and total sales were up 28%. July’s performance has validated my view on the stock that you are about to read.

What does it really mean “being contrarian?” Doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing, all the time? What if you agree with what everybody else is doing? Should you disagree for the sake of being contrarian?

“Being contrarian” means being able to think and act independently of the crowd and not be swayed by the crowd thinking. It means to stay on your own autonomous thinking track, independently of the direction the crowd is taking, even if it requires going against the crowd. It means not accepting (though respecting) the market’s wisdom unconditionally, but attempting to develop an opinion of your own.

Jos. A. Bank (Nasdaq: JOSB) has reported its second-quarter numbers, and they aren’t good — they’re great!

To start with, sales were up 20.8%, and gross and operating margins improved, mainly driven by maturation of the company’s fairly new store base. But the Jos. A. Bank story is not about growth — it always had plenty of that. It is about inventories, and they were the bright, shining star of this quarter. Specifically, inventories increased only 11.7% over the second quarter last year. So why is that great news?

To answer that question, it’s necessary to understand the issues surrounding Jos. A. Bank. First, it has double the inventory days (a measure of how long it takes to convert inventory into sales) of its closest competitor, Men’s Wearhouse (NYSE: MW), and second, it had a terrible first quarter due to too much seasonal inventory. I have written two long articles on the first issue, so let me address the second issue here.