Putting Flowers on the Grave

Ten years ago, we adopted two stray cats, which my wife named Flo and Bessie for her two biggest positions at the time.

Amazingly, both stocks are now well below where she owned them, despite the greatest bull market ever.

Join the discussion onTSC Message Boards. Forget Bethlehem Steel (BS). That's a wasting asset call on a real bad industry.

But I found myself drawn to Flowers (FLO) the other day because of the need to take down a huge order of Samoans to get my daughter jump-started in the Girl Scouts cookie drive.

I love the cookies and debated, Peter Lynch-like, buying Keebler (KBL), which is really on its butt, if it has one. Sure enough, I see that Flowers owns a ton of the darn thing, so why own Keebler if I could own Flowers? Then, deeper, it turns out that 11 of FLO's 12 stock price is Keebler!

So what is wrong with this picture? First, every analyst said this Flowers valuation was ridiculous when it was at 17. And 16. And 15. And 14.

When it got to 13, they jumped up and down, saying that it was an optical illusion. It couldn't be. Impossible.

It is now at 12.

Nobody cares. Nobody. Flowers has no earnings momentum. None.

Three years after we adopted Flo, she died.

We gave her a decent burial.

Looks like the market is doing the same for her namesake.

Random musings: When Matt "Class 7 Switch" Jacobs heard me calling around about Flowers, he thought I was thinking about buying 1-800-Flowers (FLWS) and quickly told me not to waste my time. Maybe there will be a whole new dot-com generation of dispirited Flowers holders!