I'm thinking the stocks will go up a bit this time. The sales projections were totally softballed especially for a holiday season, but since nothing has changed here the stocks will slide right back down within weeks. Unless, perhaps Wall Street likes dirty, crumbling stores and empty shelves? On second thought, more goes into it than just sales. As long as the right spreadsheets are filled out, we might be all right.
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And if our earnings announcement does suck, will they take any responsibility for quarter after quarter of cumulative crummy high-level decisions and directives skewed by seriously messed up priorities and raging hypocrisy that are at the heart of this mess or will they only point fingers elsewhere and blame it on "increasing competition?" I'm pretty sure we all know which way this will go.
Hey WFM leadership: LISTEN TO YOUR TEAM MEMBERS ON THE FRONT LINES! We want this business to be successful, but the downstream impact of your ivory tower decisions is making it almost impossible!!
Ha ha ha!! -1xqa, good one! It does make one wonder how programs come and go, NEW, ever larger texts, more signage, more pamphlets on guilty eating, PETA Avoidance, non-GMO!?, ... Then hey, let's cut people because it's all about education and telling people we are GREAT.
I work in the florida region and i know plenty of our stores have had negative comps through the holidays..it cant help that a couple of stl's got fired in recent month also..the lack of direction and hiring freezes caused some staffing problems here and there also..and i want to know how much of our comp was due to price increases versus actual new sales..
There's an old saying on Wall Street. Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered. These idiots believed their own publicity when they were in high cotton. They had everyone convinced that they were retail geniuses and even changing capitalism as we know it just because they used track lighting and spent ridiculous amounts on reclaimed wood from old mills, and had the circus perform when cutting a cheese wheel. Woohoo. Then there was some stupid Fortune cover about two years ago about how Whole Foods was changing America. That was a huge red flag right there. That's when they should have sold. But they were pigs. And now everyone sees it was just a light show with a lot of flash and no substance...no plan, no professionalism, and short-sighted, self-obsessed little bozos with egos the size of Texas. A collection of personality cults with each region having little versions of these imaginary "higher beings" who would enlighten us with their wisdom. Now the people who've been selling groceries for 100 years are schooling us on how this is done. It's simple: They're not going to roll over just because you wrote a freakin' book or had teams spending weeks stacking the cheese or used reclaimed bricks from an old factory or thought you could change the way people eat in sh--tholes like (insert hick town here).
There is NO WAY that financial call will be positive. Here in the SW Region, over 80 teams had to submit a margin explanation to the Regional Level. Teams are forced to submit an explanation if an individual Team misses margin above or below 1000bp (ex. +1001bp or -1001bp) and believe me, nobody made it above. That doesn't include all the Teams that missed it above or below 1000bp (ex. +999bp or -999bp) in which they have to submit an explanation at the store level. It was a horrible first quarter! After all the layoffs, they promised that we would only count inventory once every quarter, which we did for the first, but after these number came out, they immediately sent "direction moving foward" that we would be going back to counting inventory every FP for Meat and Seafood Teams atleast that I am aware of. Though I don't see anymore layoffs in the near future, only because our store is already operating on minimal bones as it is, I invision a "Micromanaging" atmosphere taking place. Where we get paid to work, not think or be creative. We are slowly losing our individuality as a company.
Oh, please do get started on options, especially since we know who plays that game.
It's currently $29.38. Maybe a whole dollar more than last time someone posted (few days ago). I doubt it will ever climb above $40/share again.
There's no telling what the stock price may do. A lot depends on whether profits are "better than expected" and the current short interest ratio, which is the number of days it would take for those who are "short" the stock to cover their positions. A stock can pop when there's a short squeeze. People make all kinds of bets on stocks, including betting that the price will decline. They borrow shares, sell them, then buy them back later to replace what they borrowed. I know it sounds crazy but it's a trading strategy. If the shares are lower, they make money. If it seems like the shares may go higher, that creates a buying panic that can force the stock price higher still for awhile. On the other hand, if the short interest is very low and profits or sales projections are soft (again), the stock could sell off in a hurry because few people have to buy to cover their short positions so there's nowhere to go but down. Don't get my started on options. That's a whole different way that people play the market.
Expect a 'blood-bath' on Thursday morning when the market opens! The last quarter sucked! JMHO