Thread regarding Nordstrom layoffs

Looks like that's going to be February, Anon. The earnings so far is that press release and the call with the execs. The calendar will force the rent issue, and we'll learn about holiday sales.

I'm disappointed with the photos in the earnings call slide deck. Why so many ugly people? Nordstrom used to be about transcendent beauty, and the slide deck is consistently appalling.

For now you should be happy at the spike in $jwn, knowing that some hedge fund jerks go to Thanksgiving grateful just to be alive after the margin calls and evisceration they received this week. It's their fault for not watching the short-interest % on the stock and knowing it could blow up like this.

Before anyone gets too c—y, be sure to look at the long-term chart of $shld, er, I mean $shldq, what we used to know as Sears. It's now trading for nickels on the pink sheets, but observe the sharp rallies it had on the way down.

The same is true of $jcp, er, $jcpnq. It doubled plenty of times on the way to oblivion.

Good luck this weekend, you people. Sell all the things.

That was not a comprehensive earnings report. I want to know in total how much rent they skipped on, how much overhead they cut down, layoffs, etc.

I guess I should feel happy to help continue jwn's success with my layoff... cost savings to the moon! Maybe I can get a good deal on an NYC condo when the bottom falls out.
Was that building built with family money or jwn money?

There are COVID tax credits expiring, the whole rent problem with the FLS, the costs to keep Manhattan #212 open. It's amazing to watch $jwn sky this morning, when the company remains seriously fragile and wounded, really only a couple bad quarters away from hard choices. I'm sure some lazy hedge funds were just sitting on large short positions waiting for it to dive under $10, which will be like drowning at this point, not coming back up. Those dopes deserve their misery this morning.

I still think Nordstrom should issue 50 million shares this afternoon and pocket a quick billion in honest cash for a rainy day. With proper Swedish (stingy) management they could outlast Macy's.

The world is pricing in experimental mRNA vaccines? OK and no, thank you ... I'll pass. Remember, firms have been working on coronavirus vaccines since the original SARS outbreaks in the early 2000s, with no success. PCR infection tests are flawed and used for policy lies.

Worldwide depression is here, at some point that gets priced-in, too. It's a battle to control what's left of the dying (and still dangerous) empire, a wild looting operation.

Seems like all the profits this quarter were due to cost savings? Debt increased overall, will cost savings continue into next quarter?

Yeah, I looked for that. Will check again in the 10-Q when it's out.

Otherwise, seems likely for the February earnings cycle. Then they will have the holidays in and a plan for What To Do about the mall rents. The stores would want to see the online share back under 50% of demand. There are a couple of lawsuits out there re the half-payment of rents, right?

By February all the mothballed debt in the economy – rents, commercial leases, student loans – should be serviced again, a real burden. Maybe we'll witness a cascading default across some of these creaking sectors – hotels, malls, offices, airlines.

Did anyone ask if they are paying rent, or is that their cost restructuring plan?

A good exchange from the earnings call:

Trina Schurman

We’ll now take one more question.

Operator

Thank you. Our last question is from Bob Drbul with Guggenheim.

Bob Drbul

Hi. Just curious, if you could maybe comment – you talked about the local market strategy, but just curious how New York City is performing for you with the flagships and whether the traffic is there and the volume and how the customers are responding, in a big market like New York? Thanks.

Anne Bramman

Yes. Thanks. Pete, do you want to address the New York question?

Pete Nordstrom

Yes. I think that the worst thing for us of the New York thing is that, we don't have a huge legacy in body work that we were open, what, five months before the pandemic hit. So, I mean, I guess, in some ways, it helps that we don't have this big history built up. But we still are big believers in that market. I mean, it remains a huge and powerful market.

We talk about occasions and stuff like that. You think about the New York market, things like tourism and people going to work and going to events. That's a big part of what drives sales there. So it hit them pretty hard. But I think it's similar for us in pretty much any urban store we have, whether that be Chicago or Seattle or San Francisco.

So it's not a total anomaly, but we've got a really great team there. And it's probably the blessing in disguise always. It's given us a lot of urgency and focus around how to connect with customers personally and improve kind of the personal sales and everything that goes with that. So we're still big believers in New York, and we're just going to work through it, and there will be brighter days ahead for sure.

Bob Drbul

Great. Thank you very much.