The Seal's Same Store Sales and More

Well, Wet Seal (WTSLA) came in with their Same Store Sales figures today. They reported a decline of 10.8%, which was worse than the consensus estimate of -7.5%. The stock moved sharply lower at the open to 3.10, then rebounded, and closed green for the day. I guess that's a good sign, but I won't read too much into it, since the entire day's trading consisted of relatively low volume.

I do remain quite bullish in the company, and I believe the stock is under accumulation. Here is a price/volume chart over the last 11 trading days. Each data point represents a 30-minute window of trading. For each half-hour window, you can see the volume... green bars show the volume on an up move, and red bars show the volume on a down move.


Most of the up moves seem to be accompanied by larger volume as compared to the down moves. Maybe it's just seeing what I want to see, but I do believe that viewing volume and price together is usually worthwhile.

Here's the daily price/volume data for the same 11 trading days.

10-Apr-08 3.35 +0.06 1,188,100
09-Apr-08 3.29 -0.17 1,168,400
08-Apr-08 3.46 -0.04 1,905,700
07-Apr-08 3.50 +0.01 2,478,800
04-Apr-08 3.49 +0.12 2,954,900
03-Apr-08 3.37 -0.02 1,291,000
02-Apr-08 3.39 -0.13 1,474,100
01-Apr-08 3.52 +0.13 2,767,300
31-Mar-08 3.39 +0.19 4,080,700
28-Mar-08 3.20 +0.33 3,554,400
27-Mar-08 2.87 +0.24 3,265,800

It might also be worth mentioning that since the start of the year, there have been several SEC filings reporting large ownership interests.

01/22/08 - Barclay's Global Investors - 3.24% ownership.
02/14/08 - Paradigm Capital Management - 5.1% ownership.
02/14/08 - Riverview Group LLC - 5.4% ownership.

Listed below, I believe, are members of the Riverview Group that own the stake in WTSLA... I pulled these from the Amended 13G filing. One of the world's richest people, Israel Englander, is listed as having 5.9% beneficial ownership. So, I wonder if that means that on top of the Riverview Group holdings, he himself personally holds 0.5%. I guess it doesn't matter all that much.

CATAPULT CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC
CATAPULT PARTNERS, LTD.
INTEGRATED HOLDING GROUP LP
ISRAEL A. ENGLANDER
MILLENCO LLC
MILLENNIUM INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT GP LLC
MILLENNIUM INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT LP
MILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT LLC

Anyway, hope the rich folks are right about the company. Check you all later.