WRC: A Balloon Can’t Stay Underwater Forever

11/06/08 12:12PM EST
This was perhaps the earliest (and often most painful) call of my career. But you can only hold a balloon underwater for so long. WRC is finally being exposed for what it is. A massive over-earner.
A colleague shot me an email this morning saying “Warnaco finally pulled a Warnaco!” How true. I’m not going to waste your time or mine giving the run-down of what they said on the call, or what happened. The bottom line is that this has largely been a FX-induced margin story as the company printed too much FX benefit, and understated the impact to the Street. Check any of my past posts for the math. I won’t bore you with it now.

So what’s in the stock now? That a 10% margin is not sustainable after all without FX tailwind. 7% is closer to reality. But what happens if a new Obama Administration takes up rates in '09 and the dollar along with it? Then FX turns into a headwind, and there is no reason margins cannot go back to the low/mid single digit range. That’s when cash flow gets to a point where we need to start to look at debt covenants again.

There will come a time to buy this stock. But even with a 30% hit from yesterday – and 2/3 off its 1-year high, we’re not there yet.
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