No Fan of ANN

3/14 - "Remember Mother’s admonition about how if you couldn’t find something nice to say ….? Ann Taylor Stores (ANN) is taking that to heart. The retailing environment is so cruddy, and the short-term performance so choppy, it just doesn’t acquit itself well anymore when it serves up monthly sales data. So it’s not going to do it."

"Annie missed targets with its fourth-quarter results, coming in a penny a share south of estimates, once it lopped off the charges it took for its on-going restructuring effort. Sales fell, as expected. The outlook isn’t very constructive: the first quarter and the year are both going to miss what analysts had been forecasting."