Hudson Bay Co. (HBC.TO)

It is a roll of the dice. The retail business is mature and declining. It is a play on real estate.

You have to get your head around the value of their real estate. The whole retail space is under tremendous pressure. It is just a question of when they are going to unlock those assets.

The real estate play on this has caught people’s attention. A lot of the stores could not really afford to pay. They have to wait to pay out until they are more profitable.

The retail space is a very difficult space. The core of their business is retailing, but the story is about retail and acquisition. As a real estate company they are getting near the bottom. but as a retailer there is really very little value. He does not like any retailers.

$9-$8 is acting as a base. You want to see it break above the range it has been trading in, around $12.95. This is going to run into resistance at about $12.77. The 200-day moving average is coming down as well. If it got above $13, you might want to get rid of half of it and hope the real estate holdings unlocks some higher value.

It looks to be basing. There is a possibility that the base is breaking. He would want to see it break support by 3 days or more so this would be a problem. If it does not get back to $9 soon he would be worried. It got hit last week.

(A Top Pick Jan 6/16. Down 48%.) They had a great platform to launch forward in retail. What he didn’t see was the effect that Amazon (AMZ-N) was going to have on the entire business. There is $20-$24 embedded in real estate in the company. He sold his holdings.

Has done a really good job in taking a Canadian retailer and expanding it globally. Made some very good acquisitions and have done that quite well. They also have a pretty serious real estate portfolio which they could spin out to create some value. We are talking about the retail landscape and waiting for the company to create value from real estate, which may or may not happen. A cheap value stock, but their fundamental performance has not been that solid recently.

A tough one. It is a company that appears to have a lot of value, very valuable real estate assets, but obviously operating in a very tough space. Department store retailing is getting a lot of pressure from things like Amazon (AMZN-Q). The company has a lot of leverage on its balance sheet, and it is really not clear what they can do to surface that value. Real estate is only as good as the tenant that is renting it.

This is a retailer, and they’ve been buying more retail, but it is really a real estate play. The price could probably double if they flow out a REIT and realize value on the real estate side. They are losing money on the retail side now though.

He has difficulty in what is happening in the retail market. He does not see a heck of lot of volume in the stores. There is a secular movement toward on-line shopping and he does not see how they can compete. Plowing through inventory is a margin squeeze.

There is some enthusiasm about spinning out a real estate arm. He does not like the idea of such a REIT in which there are questions about the viability of the tenant. He does not think HBC-T can make the transition to an ecommerce player.

There is a time when you have to pull the pin before you lose more money. But every company has a moment where they face plant. He thinks the real estate value alone is worth a lot more than where it is now. He has not sold his. He would hold it and grit.

(Market Call Minute.) Going through a bit of choppiness. Real estate is probably worth a lot, relative to the share price. Until you actually see that realized, weakness in their retail operations could put pressure on the stock.

The story now is that you are probably getting better than $20 in real estate assets, and retail for free. If they lever up to buy Macy’s, they have to bring in joint venture partners, which would probably be real estate partners, he thinks the whole entity in the end would trade at an even bigger discount, because the debt suddenly embedded in this thing would be absolutely huge. The risk parameters would go higher. The stock has rallied a little, and he has traded out of it, although he still owns a small part.