A Board Member Invested Over $110K in Kohl’s Corporation (KSS)

We can also compare Kohl’s to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) and Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT). Each of these large discount retailers trades at 15 times trailing earnings. Revenue growth at the two stores has been modest; while Wal-Mart managed to increase its earnings by 9% last quarter compared to the fourth quarter of its last fiscal year, Target’s was down slightly due to lower net margins. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) in particular is also notable for its low market exposure with a beta of 0.4, which helps make it a standard defensive stock. Both Wal-Mart and Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) are expected to grow their earnings at a similar rate going forward.

Wal-Mart, then, might be worth investigating as well as TJX in terms of alternatives to Kohl’s. Kohl’s and Macy’s seem to be having similar troubles in terms of their financial performance, and so even though they are trading at cheap multiples (and Kohl’s has this insider purchase as well) they don’t seem to be good buys right now as their current pricing only makes sense if they can keep their earnings steady to slowly growing over the next several years.

Disclosure: I own no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.