Battleground: Wayfair Pits Noted Short Sellers Against Wall Street Analysts
Shares of Wayfair (W) - Get Report , which describes itself as "one of the world's largest online destinations for home furnishings and decor," are sharply lower following its report last night of its third quarter results. The company posted a loss that was not as bad as forecast, reported better than expected revenues and guided to higher than expected sales in its upcoming quarter, but its stock is falling as bears and bulls debate its prospects for future profitability.
BEARS: Whitney Tilson of Kase Capital Management, who previously accused Lumber Liquidators (LL) - Get Report of selling wood with dangerous levels of formaldehyde, is making the same claims against Ark Floors, a California importer that has sold its products via Wayfair and through Walmart.com (WMT) - Get Report , reported The New York Times. Jane Carpenter, a spokeswoman for Wayfair, said the company had previously removed all of Ark's laminate from its website and said it had sold just 10 orders for Ark products since December 2014, including one order through Walmart.com, the report noted. According to a letter that Tilson sent to investors last night, published on Seeking Alpha, he stated that Wayfair is currently his largest short position "by far." Tilson noted that Wayfair competes head-to-head versus Amazon (AMZN) - Get Report , Home Depot (HD) - Get Report , Target (TGT) - Get Report , and Williams-Sonoma (WSM) - Get Report and he believes the company's chances of "ever reaching breakeven, much less earning a profit, much less earning enough of a profit to justify a $4B market cap are close to zero," he wrote. Tilson predicts the stock will be below $10 within a year. Short-selling blog Citron Research, which has also previously disclosed a short position in Wayfair, linked to a Wall Street Journal article in an October 20 tweet, saying UPS (UPS) - Get Report "destroys" Wayfair's core model of free shipping on oversized items. The Journal article detailed the shipping giant's plans to charge websites that share "generous shipping discounts with vendors."
BULLS: Piper Jaffray analyst Neely Tamminga raised her price target for Wayfair to $73 from $60 this morning, saying the company posted "exceptional" growth in Q3 amid an otherwise "lackluster" retail environment. After the New York Times article citing Wayfair's association with a vendor viewed as at-risk given a short-seller's testing of laminate flooring, Tamminga points out that all laminate flooring accounts for 0.2% of the company's sales. She continues to recommend Wayfair as a top pick for 2015. Analysts at Wells Fargo previously said in September that reports on Wayfair by short sellers included many inaccuracies. For example, Wells said that shorts' view that Wayfair loses money on every transaction relies on a "flawed view" of the company's customer acquisition costs and payback. Shorts compare Wayfair with Overstock (OSTK) - Get Report , but Wayfair is growing much more quickly that the latter company, Wells stated. According to the firm, which kept an Outperform rating on the shares, Wayfair has by far the highest organic revenue growth rate among U.S. consumer companies.
PRICE ACTION: In morning trading, Wayfair fell $5.08, or 11.2%, to $40.50 per share.
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