MarsC, I rekon you are on the right track ! if you look at the...

MarsC,

I rekon you are on the right track !

if you look at the growth over your analysis period, and "average out" the capex (stay in business + new stores etc) - then you should be able to get an idea of rate of return on incremental capital spend !

as you hinted at - the value of the land, depends upon the future profitability of the franchises's and also the "discount rate" ........

as you (quite rightly) stae - its a question of valuation !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

methinks (imho) - that it isn't cheap.

concur with the rest of your thoughts (re personailities / competitive threats (have a peak at amazon website vs jbh vs hvn .......you will see some surprising things!!) / and margins ........)

there is still plenty of fat in retailing land in oz ..........what is surprising to me - is how long it takes for this to get acted upon, and how poor (in some instances) the responses are from various company managements! (I visited MYR in lead up to xmas - and the number of very young sales staff - whom had NFI on retail.........)...

I still have a bigger picture thesis - that the retail punter is under pressure (from cost of funding mortagegs etc) and this wil impact retail spend over the next 12-18 months........the bloke from digital financial analytics puts out some v good data - worth a read)..

rgds
V-h