RCG - RCG Corporation

[Klogg]

In regards to profit per $ of revenue, I did notice that in the half-year. That being said, I would imagine the 25c is still healthy, especially in a retail climate such as this one.

I did re-visit their cash flow statement too. I remember there were two things that I noticed were the catalyst for the overall deduction in cash holdings, and these were:
- Payments to suppliers/employees: From what I can tell, they've had to increase their inventories because their range of brands/products has increased. I do want to check this out further though...
- Dividends paid: The payout ratio is huge and results in a net loss of cash. However, I remember reading that this is management's intention (they don't want to hold too much cash and have no interest in acquisitions, so they would rather return it to shareholders). If I can find this piece of info again, I'll link it to you.

One thing to look out for though is their mention of closing a few stores due to increased rents. From memory, I believe it was 3 stores that are closing. The impression I got though was that this would be offset with growth in other companies (SSS/RCG Brands).

As for DJS/MYR/JBH - I don't particularly believe management are on par with what I'd expect and their prospects for growth aren't so great, so I stay away.

[RogueTrader273]

RCG looks poised to breakout with recent extreme volume and a very bullish-looking ascending triangle formation. Fundamentals are also excellent with rising profits and rising ROE, and pays a 7.8@ dividend to boot!

[tinhat]

I just had a quick look back over this discussion. One thing that I like about RCG is The Athlete's Foot business. One of the things analysts have been lamenting about with retail is that the bricks and mortar retailers, especially the department stores have failed to offer the one thing they have that on-line can't compete with and that is in store customer service. Mark McInnes cut costs at David Jones by cutting costs including front of store staff. All the department stores have shockingly bad customer service. The staff at JB Hi Fi have amazingly decorated fingernails but can't tell you a damned thing about the digital cameras they sell.

The one thing The Athletes Foot does is that it value adds just like good old fashioned retail use to do. If shoes were just commodities we would all be walking around in Dunlop Volleys. By giving proper customer service, supposedly finding the correctly fitting shoe for the customers needs they make price less relevant and guide the customer towards making the purchase decision. The Athlete's foot is a good brand and a good business model.

[Boggo]

RCG looks poised to breakout with recent extreme volume and a very bullish-looking ascending triangle formation. Fundamentals are also excellent with rising profits and rising ROE, and pays a 7.8@ dividend to boot!

A break and hold above 40 should see new territory...

(click to expand)

[tinhat]

Liftoff. Up 3c today. Still a good dividend yield too at 7%

[tinhat]

Since my last post I topped up on RCG as it is the only discretionary-consumer/fashion related retail stock in the SMSF.

Anyway, I decided to check out the Athletes Foot website on the weekend. It is now running the Magento e-commerce CMS as implemented by Netstarter.

http://www.theathletesfoot.com.au

I certainly was surprised at the quality of the design, the degree of technical problems in the site and just the overall implementation, quality of the copy and the architecture/structure of the site.

The site is slow to load and sometimes requests even time out. I did a traceroute and found that the site is located within Rackspace in the USA. The load times for me are sluggish this morning. Even though I notice that they use Akami for serving images (a service which supposedly speeds up worldwide performance of your website by caching content globally across their servers). If the site audience is primarily Australian then the best solution is to host it in an Australian data centre IMHO.

I wrote a long email to RCG's investor relations outlining my concerns about the website. I am really quite disappointed and concerned quite frankly that either inadequate resources have been allocated to their web presence or the process is being poorly managed.

I would encourage any other shareholders to take a look at the website and report any feedback you have to investor relations at RCG.

[tinhat]

I always find it interesting how companies handle their investor relations. I telephoned GZL a few weeks ago and the company secretary returned my call and we had a chat about - well, investor related stuff - the share buy-back scheme, the dividend, about the Gazal family's majority ownership. Very informative and pleasant.

RCG on the other hand - absolutely no response to my email. Not even a form reply - thanks for contacting us. I can't believe how bad the Athelete's Foot website is but apparently the management care as little about their investor relations as they do about the website.

[Klogg]

I always find it interesting how companies handle their investor relations. I telephoned GZL a few weeks ago and the company secretary returned my call and we had a chat about - well, investor related stuff - the share buy-back scheme, the dividend, about the Gazal family's majority ownership. Very informative and pleasant.

RCG on the other hand - absolutely no response to my email. Not even a form reply - thanks for contacting us. I can't believe how bad the Athelete's Foot website is but apparently the management care as little about their investor relations as they do about the website.

I've contacted RCG 3 times as a shareholder - twice they responded on the day, the third time took them about a week...

As for TAF website, can't say I've ever had any issues, and I'm there a fair bit. The design isn't anything special, standard retail website with a lack of proper AJAX implementation for good UX, but still at the average level.
(The filtering on the left hand side did perform slowly for me though)

Nevertheless, the performs relatively well.