RE:RE:RET - not generating as much cash flow as thought? Part of it is due to the weird way that lease accounting works. RET has to capitalize their leases on their stores, depreciates them and shows on the cash flow statement the fake interest expense on the leases along with the lease payments as a financing activity.
When you add in the financing side of the lease payments, it actually all balances out. For 2022, RET gave guidance that they expect to spend $10 million.
Q4 numbers were weak.. but doing the research this morning, it looks like this is Omnicron related as Abercrombie / Lululemon were also disclosing that they had a weak quarter with Omnicron hammering demand.
So you're right in that we need to wait another Q or two to allow for the normalization of cash flows so we can see what exactly is normal. I still have a good feeling for RET - the Q2 and Q3 numbers were blow outs and if they can just keep that up, we're all rich.