Topic: Growth Stocks

Liz Claiborne Inc. $21 – New York symbol LIZ

LIZ CLAIBORNE INC. $21 (New York symbol LIZ; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 99.5 million; Market cap: $2.1 billion; WSSF Rating: Average) designs a wide variety of clothing and accessories for men and women. It sells most of its products though department stores.

Liz Claiborne recently sold four of the roughly 40 brands it owns. It also merged two clothing lines with existing brands. The company aims to sell 12 more of its slower growing brands in the next few months.

These sales will let Liz Claiborne focus on brands with higher profit potential, particularly brands aimed at younger shoppers such as Juicy Couture and Lucky Brand. An aggressive cost-cutting plan should also save the company $265 million a year by the end of 2010.

In the third quarter of 2007, earnings before restructuring costs fell 37.6%, to $0.63 a share (total $63.3 million) from $1.01 a share ($103.4 million) a year earlier. Sales fell 3.8%, to $1.26 billion from $1.31 billion.

Liz Claiborne plans to use some of the savings from the restructuring to buy back stock. It aims to repurchase $100 million worth of its shares, or about 4% of the total outstanding.

The stock now trades at 11.9 times its likely 2007 earnings of $1.76, and at 9.5 times its projected 2008 earnings of $2.21 a share. The $0.225 dividend yields 1.1%.

Liz Claiborne is a buy.

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