Forum Archive Index - July 2003

["tennyson@caverock.net.nz" <tennyson@caverock.net.nz>]

Regular readers of this list will know I bought into the WHS for the first 
time during the most recent price plunge.   They will also know that I 
didn't get quite the number of shares I wanted due to that old problem 
of lack of available money.

However, in the ensuing weeks I've been scratching around to get the 
available funds and last week put in an order for the balance of WHS 
shares I was after.   My broker was reluctant.   

"I'll be surprised if they will get down to that price" he told me.   

I asked him if there was any reason the price slipped below $5, and his 
response was that one of the large (institutional?) shareholders just 
decided to dump a few.

Today my broker got his surprise as the 7c fall in the WHS share price 
triggered my buy order at $4.85.  As of tonight I am sitting on an 
average entry price of $4.39, and an average return over the next ten 
years of 14% compounding based on my average entry price.   Of 
course all this assumes that Australia will come right eventually.  
Perhaps now that Australians are up to their eyeballs in house debt, 
the discount department store format is set to take off there as the 
Aussies start to have to watch their pennies more.

Meanwhile back in NZ, as the hedging at forty something US cents 
comes to an end, the WHS New Zealand operations are poised for a 
quantum leap in profitability.   Given all of this, a projected underlying 
PER of 18 sounds like a fair price, and a compounding return of 12.7% 
(based on WHS at $4.85) sounds fair too.

Is there a better buy on today's market for the long term investor than 
WHS?   Only WRI comes close IMO.   So why is the WHS share price 
falling?   Perhaps I should just be grateful for another opportunity to 
take advantage of that fickle business partner of mine "Mr Market".

The header to this post is a bit misleading, in the sense that short term 
I don't really care what's happening to the WHS share price.   I've 
locked in a good return.   As long as the longer term platform for 
growth is there, I'm quite happy.  However, if anyone else would like to 
post their view on what is happening at the WHS, please feel free to 
do so.

SNOOPY

discl: hold WHS

--
Message sent by Snoopy 
on Pegasus Mail version 4.02
----------------------------------
"Stay on the upside of the downside, 
Anticipate the anticipation!"




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