Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFMI)

I have an intrinsic knowledge of the supermarket retail business and let me say that whole foods is the best looking grocery store that I have EVER seen. Now here is something that you can't read in any headline. The perception of whole foods has grown to the point where they are known for their organic offerings. But what does that truly mean? It means that they can scale back their organic variety and offer more convential product that generates higher margins. Walk through the produce department and you will see what I mean. The mix is slowly changing, which means more margin and more profit. Meanwhile their image of being socially responsible and purely organic remains. Throw the dcf's out the window on this one, but just to get an idea of value, run it through a 5 yr future value model. That metric should allow the value investors to sleep a bit easier. This is a responsible company with a dominant brand, that owns an expanding customer niche. Outperform.

Howard Schultz has called this one of the best companies in America. The brand is strong, and organic and natural foods are set to grow to a near $20 billion industry by 2010. Although the price is a little steep today, this stock should best the index. CEO John Mackey wouldn't let it be otherwise.

I've seen a lot of "hype" about this stock until I was able to see Whole Foods in person. I spent several weeks in Colorado and I am thoroughly impressed with several things about WFMI.

Customer Service: There are many knowledgable people roaming the isles and strategically positioned throughout the stores. They also had many products setup for taste-testing, allowing skeptics of the health-food craze to be able to taste before taking the plunge of buying.

Store Layout: Whole Foods Markets are very neat, organized, and easy to use. Considering in Denver there are organic and health food stores everywhere, Whole Foods was definately one of the best stores to walk-in first time and find what you were looking for. Most other stores were very small, crampt, and "messy" with the amount of stuff they tried to cram into the isle. (Ironically the only other one that compared was Sunflower Farmers Markets, run by the former CEO of Wild Oats)

Customer Base: Every Whole Foods that we visited was PACKED! People of all walks of life coming and going...we even did most of our grocery shopping there, and we don't have health food stores in PA. I think you have a combo of Experience and Quality when visitng a Whole Foods. You Experience the store...almost the way Starbucks is more than coffee, Whole Foods is more than Organic Food. You also see and buy Quality: we were duly impressed with brand varieties and store brand qualities(Whole Foods Branded Items) in Quality, and prices were very good. Since we don't have any of these store out East, we bought several items to be enjoyed back home, and we will!

Potential: The potential of Whole Foods is phenominal. The financials are great, and now that the CEO has moved on from the faisco late last year, I see Whole Foods continuing to grow out west. Not only that, but the East has hardly any Health Food or Organic Food stores at all. With the above mentioned qualities, I see Whole Foods finding good favor out here; I know we would shop there. The only real future competitor out west was Sunflower...which the stores were nice, smaller, and busy...but I think they will attract more customers from the mainline grocery store than a Whole Foods shopper.

Whole Foods is a great buy in this slump in the economy, and that's why I'm putting my 5 stars on it!!!

Another growth pick. This one has almost no debt, generates strong FCF, growing sales and EPS, and has lots of room to expand. Margins show strength despite the entry of other competitors, including the warning of entry by huge food retailer Walmart. I suspect that the quality of the WFMI product and the brand name will account for much of the appeal. On the downside, growth estimates are baked into the stock price, despite the recent drawback, so future returns are contingent upon continued good performance. Nonetheless, prices are at a low, and this is a good time to pick them up on sale.

Another boom soon to bust upscale trend market. Trendy customer base lacks loyalty, overhead is too high, sheer cost in waste disposal alone will drive them out of existence. A fad stock, with a fickle customer base, and over inflated expectations. Nothing to like investment wise. There stuffed goose livers may taste like butter, but this stock is going nowhere but in the toilet. When every recommendation says buy, it means they already bought, and if you buy this your purchasing their over-inflated shares.

All I know is that once you start shopping there, you don't want to stop...very high quality stuff that is almost impossible to find ALL-IN-ONEPLACE elsewhere! When your body feels better eating this stuff, it's hard to want to shop elsewhere...the cost, taste, and timesavings seem worth the cost...hoping a healthy proportion of consumers see it likewise...

I have a lot of past successful underperform calls on this stock on my scorecard, and I think it's about time to get back in.
My thesis is completely unchanged... the problem with Whole Foods is that in order to capitalize on a (hopefully) growing organic food trend, it has to build or acquire new stores.
All its biggest competitors have to do is reallocate shelf space and leverage an already existing logistical infrastructure.
Sure, the P/E isn't nearly as insanely high as it was when I made my ealier underperform calls, but I think the story is pretty much the same.

Whole foods has become a value play as it's been beaten down and now the PEG is over 1. It should generally hold up even if the economy slows. Technically, it is showing signs of turning positive.

I've seen a lot of "hype" about this stock until I was able to see Whole Foods in person. I spent several weeks in Colorado and I am thoroughly impressed with several things about WFMI.

Customer Service: There are many knowledgable people roaming the isles and strategically positioned throughout the stores. They also had many products setup for taste-testing, allowing skeptics of the health-food craze to be able to taste before taking the plunge of buying.

Store Layout: Whole Foods Markets are very neat, organized, and easy to use. Considering in Denver there are organic and health food stores everywhere, Whole Foods was definately one of the best stores to walk-in first time and find what you were looking for. Most other stores were very small, crampt, and "messy" with the amount of stuff they tried to cram into the isle. (Ironically the only other one that compared was Sunflower Farmers Markets, run by the former CEO of Wild Oats)

Customer Base: Every Whole Foods that we visited was PACKED! People of all walks of life coming and going...we even did most of our grocery shopping there, and we don't have health food stores in PA. I think you have a combo of Experience and Quality when visitng a Whole Foods. You Experience the store...almost the way Starbucks is more than coffee, Whole Foods is more than Organic Food. You also see and buy Quality: we were duly impressed with brand varieties and store brand qualities(Whole Foods Branded Items) in Quality, and prices were very good. Since we don't have any of these store out East, we bought several items to be enjoyed back home, and we will!

Potential: The potential of Whole Foods is phenominal. The financials are great, and now that the CEO has moved on from the faisco late last year, I see Whole Foods continuing to grow out west. Not only that, but the East has hardly any Health Food or Organic Food stores at all. With the above mentioned qualities, I see Whole Foods finding good favor out here; I know we would shop there. The only real future competitor out west was Sunflower...which the stores were nice, smaller, and busy...but I think they will attract more customers from the mainline grocery store than a Whole Foods shopper.

Whole Foods is a great buy in this slump in the economy, and that's why I'm putting my 5 stars on it!!!

Great company with good leadership....forum bs will eventually blow over. People love the stores and I've never heard a bad word said about their stores. Stock is on sale at this levels as this company warrants higher multiples.

Eating right today is Healthcare for the Health minded. Most people don't get this, they simply buy food based upon price. So they are able to criticise the company on how much everything costs because there is very little competition in this segment of the industry. Whole Foods enjoys a heathly pricing margin because it is a unique shopping experience with very knowledgable staff. I think they wrap there stores in to much presentation and could save some money if they toned it down; however, that same presentation creates a colorful shopping environment that is easily recognized when other retailers try and copy it. There isn't a Whole Foods where I live and even if there was I would still buy most of my produce from the local Farmer's Market. But the things I couldn't get from there would probably all be purchased at Whole Foods. The chemical additives that the main stream food companies add to processed food creates all kinds of health problems over the long term. A person simply can't "eat right" by buying the usual name brand foods. Honestly, the "Crisis in Healthcare" would go away if food companies refused to use these additives.

high oil prices means higher prices for food. Whole Foods pricing is already at the "pain" threshhold for most customers. Additional competition from other large grocery stores (safeway, etc.) in organic produce spells slowing sales for WFMI.

Whole Foods has enormous growth potential. With only around 200 stores, compare it to Safeway, who operates over 2,000. And WF doesn't have to compete with Wal Mart the way Safeway does. Whole Foods is Best of Breed among its competitors like Wild Oats.

A great idea but the majority of the population can't afford and doesn't understand organic foods. If they become more competitive in price I would reconsider. Personally, I love their food. Their meats are awesome but everything is too expernsive. Trader Joes is moving in on their client base.

The P/E is higher than I would like, but this is a very long-term pick. I think that Whole Foods will be alive and well for decades. I like the way they steadily increase their dividends. I also like the stores, and John Mackey.

Pop today was completely unreasonable. Whole Foods is overpriced nonsense that may be going out of business in the next year or two unless they find some way to make their prices more reasonable. Every time I go into their stores I notice that lower middle class frequent here, buying a few items since they cannot afford to do their regular shopping. This store got by during the good years off image alone, from "wannabee rich" shoppers getting a kick off paying through the nose for what they could get much cheaper at other places. That is ending.

I think Whole Foods is the future of the grocery world. They still have an incredible amount available to expand, are well managed, have good financials, and an excellent, superb product. The volatility will be there in the short-term, but the long-term future (20+ years) has a lot of potential that Whole Foods will be able to take advantage of. Organic food will probably continue to be a large market, and Whole Foods should prosper because of it.

Excellent management, tops in their field, riding a monster trend and controlling costs and growth...they have almost as much square footage under development as they have up and running, they're just getting started.

Okay, I work here. I'm biased. But really, it IS a great company, we DO know what we're doing and the stores I go to are always packed. Will it continue to have the over 30% growth that it's had the last 3 years? Probably not, but for a long term investment, you could do a lot worse. It's a little down now (but still 18% higher than it was 18 months ago), so maybe it's time to buy.