The Collected Chatroom Works of Whole Foods' Bard

And in a July 3, 2006, post:

One thing I've enjoyed about this Board is watching the shorts come and go every year. They come on to this Board making highly arrogant and "original" proclamations that this is just a stupid grocery store which is ridiculously overvalued and is going to get its comeuppance very, very soon. How many shorts have the long-term participants on this Board watched disappear every year with large losses on their shorts? Several hundreds now. Surely we must be getting close to a thousand or so by now. This current batch of shorts (with one or two exceptions) won't be here a year from now. They will have disappeared. However, new shorts will take their place (for the shorts we will always have with us) and they will say the same stupid and unoriginal things that their predecessors said before them, believing themselves to be both original and brilliant. There is nothing we can do, but regularly flush out the old shorts from the ignore button and replace them with the current crop. Meanwhile, Whole Foods will keep doing its thing -- producing unmatched same store sales growth and continue its irresistable growth, driving the stock price up and the shorts off of the Board.

Mackey also regularly disparaged competitors, especially Wild Oats(WFMI Quote). From Oct. 30, 2000:

Fundamentals ultimately drive stock prices and OATS fundamentals are simply awful. ... OATS shouldn't sell at more than 10 X 2001 earnings. This is a $3.00 stock. The only thing keeping it above this is buy-out speculation. Once the market figures out that WFMI isn't going to buy this company, it's headed to $3.00 -- or less.

From March 31, 2005:

OATS is greatly overvalued. PE for Whole Foods is 47. The PE for OATS is infinite! OATS has never made a dime over its collective history. It lost money in 2004. It is going to lose money in 2005 and for the foreseeable future. It doesn't have a viable business model that can compete. Time will prove what I am saying is correct and the stock will inevitably follow a downward trajectory as the Market comes to realize that no one is going to buy OATS and bail out them out of their countless mistakes.

While Mackey disparaged Wild Oats fundamentals, he also discussed merger opportunities. Consider this, from an Aug. 15, 2000, post:

Who would want to buy OATS? Surely no convention supermarket chain would. A bunch of small stores with low sales volumes and negative comp. sales. Remember most supermarket chains are unionized. No way the unions are going to let OATS stay non-union if bought by a conventional operator. $20 a share?! Highly dilutive for any conventional chain.

WFMI is the only logical buyer for this company and I can't see it happening anytime soon. Why would WFMI want to take on all the OATS problems?