The Games Signet Plays
Also updates on SiteOne, Vital, QXO and a few things I'm working on.
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Earlier this year I wrote about the alphabet soup of metrics used by Signet $SIG. The more I think of it, the more I think it’s like the Hat Shuffle game played between innings at the ballpark. Now you see it... now you don’t. And when you do – look fast, otherwise what you saw one quarter may be different than what you see this quarter – even if it’s called the same thing. In that original report, I wrote about how Signet had shifted its emphasis from Average Transaction Value, or ATV, to Average Unit Retail, or AUR. I concluded...
AUR? ATV? Who’s on First?
It’s enough to make your head explode – almost as if management is intentionally changing its favored metrics or definitions to whatever makes it look best at the time… or to intentionally confuse investors.
Which gets us to where we are today – or at least with the just-reported Q1, when investors cheered an 8% rise in AUR vs. 5% the prior quarter. Fine and dandy, until you read the fine print and see that the definition of AUR changed... again!
Thanks to the keen eye of my friend and sometimes collaborator Katherine Spurlock, whose idea of a good time is to track what’s under each hat via SEC filings and press releases, here’s the lowdown...