Three announcements last week from Cabela’s that I didn’t have a chance to blog:
First, they announced their plans for their first store in Colorado. It will be along I-70 in the vicinity of Wheatridge and Golden. The concern here is what effect it will have on the Sidney store, where the parking lot is usually filled with Colorado license plates on weekends. It’ll be a great move for the company, but will definitely put a hurt on the local store. When I was in local radio here, I tested a plan to bring new traffic into the Sidney store. It worked great. I still have the PowerPoint. Maybe a little retail pain will get some attention. There’s no doubt they’ll have to do some things differently in Sidney once the Colorado store opens. Of course, the easiest thing is to just shrug and pretend there’s nothing to be done about it and start reducing payroll. Everyone in town hopes they’ll at least make an effort to re-strategize this store. Notwithstanding the payroll, it’s a major contributor of local half-cent sales tax revenue.
Second, their 3rd quarter earnings report was released. They’re making more money, but were disappointed by a 3% decline in same-store sales. You can listen to the conference call on www.cabelas.com.
Thirdly, they’ll be putting together another public offering, but this time all of the selling shares will be offered by existing shareholders. Read about it here.