Off-price department store $ROST reported 16% growth in its 3Q17 earnings, helped by increased sales and higher merchandise margin. Net earnings during the quarter rose to $274MM from $245MM during 3Q16. EPS grew 16% YoY to $0.72 from $0.62 during the prior year period. Net sales grew 8% to $3.3Bil, with comp store sales growth of 4%. $ROST Ross Stores, Inc. Earnings AlphaGraphic: Q3 2017 Highlights http://alph.st/b1c0c628
Sold 10 of my last 20 shares at $73.25 this morning. I once had a couple hundred shares that I'd accumulated going back several years. But I've been taking profits here on the way up in recent months. This has been a pretty profitable investment over the last several years.
The thing about Ross is that when you walk into one of their stores and look around and check out the merchandise, you're very underwhelmed. But they sell a variety of un-fancy things very cheap, which always appeals to many people. They're fundamentally quite strong - sales, earnings, margins, debt to equity, cash flow, etc. And they have tons of institutional ownership in the stock. Seems like they'd make a good takeover target for one of the giants like WMT or AMZN
As they say in some parts of England, 'Where there's muck there's brass'. Sometimes it is the cheaper underwhelming things which sell well