I've been poring over Guitar Center's financial documents. Their growth numbers are impressive. Too impressive. Unless they're selling cruise missiles on the side or own shares of Haliburton, there have to be some fiscal shenanigans at work. On closer examination, my hunch starts to look like the correct one. What with all this record sales growth, they're sure burning money. Went through 10-11 million of their cash reserves, leaving about 5 mil in the bank. Just filed to borrow 90 mil. Debt, bad. Still have some studying to see what numbers led them to conclude that they're making buckets of money. I just don't see it. Still, one has to respect mega-conglomerates - especially those with fiscal problems and visions of empire-building. They can do a lot of damage when wounded.

I suspect it's a typo, but they claim about half a million a year in sales per square foot. The rest of their numbers are in thousands, but I suspect that this one should read in dollars instead. That works out to about $500 a square foot. That's a realistic number. It's still a whole lot more than I make in the same space, but that's probably to be expected. In terms of inventory per square foot, they come out about the same as me. The only difference is they've got huge stores packed to the ceiling and I've got a small one packed to the ceiling.

My curiosity naturally led me to find this article, which ironically was written a year ago today. Thanks, Matt. You've given me some things to look for as I wade through these financial statements.