In Focus

Hand In Hand With Bebe

Hmmmm. What shall I wear to the Calgary Flames Christmas party this Sunday night? I go through this dilemma every year. It's not that I don't own anything cute enough to wear, it's that I need to know if it's still in style. You see, I'm the oldest hockey player's wife at these things. It's true. At thirty-six, I'm old. Insiders call me a "Veteran's Wife." How flattering is that? The average age of the other wives/girlfriends is twenty-five, so I feel a little out of the loop when it comes to the latest fashion. But come on, at thirty-something, you still want to look hot; you just have no clue what "hot" is anymore. There is only one store that can handle my "What's Hot Holiday Hang-up." BEBE (NYSE:BEBE).

Like I said, I have been going through this every year, and have been since I was twenty-eight. (That was when my husband had played ten years in the NHL and it qualified me as old, I mean, a "Veteran's Wife"). Top that off with the fact that I already had three kids - I was ancient. I was spending six hours a day nursing, five hours a day scrubbing tomato sauce stains out of the high chair tray, four hours a day doing laundry, well, you get the picture. Who had time to sip tea while reading Cosmo? One year on my annual "Let's see which of my kids can cry the loudest on Santa's lap" trip to the mall, I found Bebe. My fashion prayers were answered. Hot, sexy, and classy. all in one store. I soon had no need for my Audrey Hepburn Little Black Dress. I loved the Audrey look, but Audrey would have looked better in Bebe.

As a Chick, we would take this one step further, and years later I did. I loved the store, so I decided to run it through the Chicks Dozen. Bebe! (use it as an exclamation like olé! in this place in my story), it passed, and I bought the stock. I bought it at $13.00 a share and watched it rise to more than $40.00 in nine months. It validated that I knew what I was doing. Not only did I look hot one night a year, I was a hot stock picker.

I was a hot stock picker for nine months. Then the sky fell. Aha, let's run the Chicks' Dozen numbers criterion for Bebe over the past year and see if we can find out why. This is something I always like to do when looking at a stock to purchase. I pull up the last four quarter's numbers from their income statement and balance sheets. Being a Chick, I also like to keep it simple, so I went to the simplest website that contains lists just like I want to use them: www.marketguide.com. I pulled the numbers below from their site so we could take a closer look.

All Numbers In Millions of U.S. Dollars

All Numbers In Millions of U.S. Dollars

Before we go through the actual numbers, take a peek at Marketguide's chart on Bebe's twelve months stock chart.

Look's like a big smile. But what's with the low point? Let's look at how the figures above pan out and give us our Chicks Dozen numbers.

Do you see the slump? For the three months ending March 31, 2000 and June 30, 2000, Bebe's Gross Margin's and Net Margins slipped, and their Flow Ratio increased. (Remember we want our Flow Ratio below 1.5; the smaller the better. Bebe's kept getting bigger.) Then, this last quarter ending September 30, 2000, they all went in the right direction. Look at the stock price. The price of the stock goes hand in hand to what was happening to their Chicks' Dozen numbers. Isn't it nice when you can actually answer why the sky is falling?

As you can see, it has been a rough year watching my baby, I mean Bebe. But it was nice to see that this past quarter, things are starting to look hot again. Speaking of, you should see the little number I'm going to wear this year.