Como analisar um supermercado

A reportagem da Forbes mostra o perigo da análise econômico-financeira rasteira. Aquela história do quanto maior, melhor, que você aprende em péssimos livros de análise, é muito perigosa. Exemplo da reportagem: quanto maior a margem, melhor. A margem da Tiffany (54%) é melhor do que de um supermercado (12,2% de margem bruta, conforme citado na reportagem). Mas o supermercado pode estar perdendo vantagem competitiva.

A revista propõe um novo indicador: o tempo do visitante em relação ao número de vendas. Aqui a reportagem completa:

Minding the Store; The fortunes of retailers can turn on a dime. We offer some unusual metrics for investors to stay a step ahead.
Jack Gage
Forbes - 13/08/2007
Volume 179 Issue 3

The fortunes of retailers can turn on a dime. We offer some unusual metrics for investors to stay a step ahead.

Investors mulling retail stocks have well-established metrics to look at, among them inventory turnover (cost of sales divided by inventory), same-store-sales growth (the change in sales for stores open at least one year) and sales per square foot. But the better known a financial measure is, the more likely it is to be fully incorporated in the stock price. What about the less-well-traveled statistics for this industry? In this installment of our Beyond the Balance Sheet series we offer several nontraditional ways of comparing retailers. Says Marc Bettinger, an analyst with the Stanford Group, a Miami investment bank, "You don't take gross margin or same-store sales at face value. You have to look at what is making them tick."

Start with gross margins. Higher is, in the first analysis, better: A billion dollars of sales at jeweler Tiffany & Co. (gross margin, 55.4%) is worth more to its owners than the same volume at discounter Costco (gross margin, 12.2%). But there's another side to the story. Most retailers are in a position to boost their profits, at least in the short term, by widening the gross margin--jacking up prices, that is. It may take a while for the uncompetitive pricing to take its toll in customer departures. So, look twice at companies whose gross margins are widening. They may be sacrificing long-term growth for a short-term profit advantage.

During the October 2006 quarter Wal-Mart posted a gross margin of 23.7%, its highest in four years. But that Christmas shopping season Wal-Mart slashed prices on toys, flat-screen televisions and other electronics as it warred with Target and Costco. During the last two months of 2006 Wal-Mart's margin slipped and its shares dropped 10%.

Which retailers have margins that may have peaked? J.Crew has raised prices and shifted its focus from being a purveyor of bargain apparel to selling $265 Versailles dresses. The strategy has helped widen the $1.2 billion (sales) retailer's gross margin by two percentage points in the past year and its stock has doubled to $54. But J.Crew now competes with the likes of Coldwater Creek and Ann Taylor Stores, which have considerably higher gross margins. What if they defend their turf? J.Crew is a Wall Street darling, as you can see in its high enterprise multiple, defined as the ratio of enterprise value (market value of common, plus debt, minus cash) to Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). Perhaps too much of a darling.

The converse: A retailer whose profits are disappointing but whose gross margin has narrowed may be a bargain. In the table, Less Might Be More, we show five retailers whose gross margins are narrowing, suggesting that their strategy is to steal shoppers away from the competition, and we show those whose margins are widening, which could come back to haunt them. Other things (notably, price/earnings multiples) being equal, you are probably better off with the former.

Chico's FAS, a $1.7 billion (sales) retailer of women's apparel, has seen its gross margin drop 3.4 percentage points in the past year as its store count increased to 930 from 763. Why? The new stores have had difficulty building traffic and have sold more marked-down goods to move the inventory. The company recently began marketing a new underwear line and is planning to slow down its rate of expansion. If Chico's can get the necessary traffic to boost sales per square foot back to its 2006 peak of $1,028, a case can be made that the company's current earnings are understated. On Wall Street this company is cheap; the enterprise multiple is only ten.

The Stanford Group's Bettinger likes $1.3 billion (sales) Urban Outfitters, which operates 207 lifestyle stores with the Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People brands. Urban's gross margin has decreased 2.7 percentage points the past year, stunting earnings growth. Bettinger says the company stumbled with fashion last year, finding itself too far ahead of the trend toward wider tops and tighter-fitting bottoms for women, which started in Europe two years ago. "The company has excellent management and is in a good position to rebound with its product mix," he says. Last seen at $22, the stock is off 5% this year. Bettinger says the stock is worth $29.

Here's an unconventional way to look for unrealized potential among online retailers: Check out the amount of time visitors spend on their sites, in relation to the number of sales. (Visit minutes and transaction volume statistics are tracked by Nielsen NetRatings.) There is huge variation in the numbers: Ebay logs a purchase for every 8 minutes visitors spend on its site, while Overstock.com, an off-price vendor, gets only one sale per 137 minutes. On the theory that getting the eyeballs is half the battle, you might bet on the laggards like Overstock. Any gain in sales per hour of eyeballing would translate into more revenue, with only slightly higher overhead costs. This is, to be sure, a risky bet, since Overstock is a moneyloser. But it spent $68 million on advertising last year. If visibility is an asset on the Web, this outfit may yet prove its perennial short-sellers wrong. The table on the previous page shows e-tailers with the potential to turn window shoppers into spenders.

Inventory turnover is one of the classic measures of retailing success: The higher the number, the better, since that means the retailer is getting more mileage out of the assets it has tied up on its shelves. But Robert F. Buchanan, an analyst at A.G. Edwards, has a different take on turnover. He asks: Shouldn't there be a way to give credit to store owners who get their suppliers to finance their inventory? So on his retailing scorecard accounts payable are subtracted from inventory. What's left is a measure of how much capital the store has sitting on its shelves. Then Buchanan divides this number into gross profit to arrive at a turnover-like number that we'll call "capital efficiency." What's important is not just the capital efficiency but whether that number is improving. "I liken this ratio, along with same-store sales, to taking a retailer's blood pressure, pulse and heart rate," says Buchanan. "When these are healthy, it's time to at least consider opening new stores."

By Buchanan's yardstick J.C. Penney looks good, improving its capital efficiency from 13.1 in the 12 months leading up to the January quarter to 16.1 in the period ending in April (see table "Other People's Money"). Buchanan also likes Costco, whose capital efficiency is so good that it can't be measured. At Costco payables (as of its May quarter) were greater than inventory, meaning the $64 billion (sales) wholesaler is selling goods before it has to pay for them. That nifty arrangement makes up for Costco's slim profit margins.

Instead of chasing after retailers using the old standby of return on assets, consider a variation: Go for companies whose ROA measures will remain unscathed if and when rulemakers lower the boom on lease accounting. Current accounting rules allow retailers that sign certain long-term leases to omit the leased property from their balance sheets. (The basic rule is that omission is acceptable if the lease term is less than 75% of the useful life of the building.) But the Financial Accounting Standards Board may change that next year. Such a move would spell trouble for Walgreen, the $53 billion drugstore chain. Using current figures, Walgreen's return on assets (net income divided by assets) is a handsome 12%; under the proposed rule, it would have to add $26.5 billion worth of leased store space to its balance sheet, sinking its ROA to 5%. In contrast the ROA for Nordstrom and O'Reilly Automotive, which have only modest doses of leases that would be affected, would barely budge.

Here's one last score for retailers you might not have thought about: the affordability of health insurance. Employers that already cover their employees will (if past trends continue) confront big cost increases; those that don't provide wide coverage may be forced by state or federal legislation to do so. Retailers whose sales per employee are high are better able to withstand these cost pressures. The table (Fat and Happy), lists some.