Retail has been a hot topic lately as the sector is undergoing lots of change and chaos. Old style brick and mortar retailers are hemorrhaging jobs and profits as they come under increasing assault from companies that can operate on the internet and provide the convenience of home delivery. That has been the story even as the media and Donald Trump focus on workers in even more anachronistic fields--like coal mining.

However, for a long time, some retailers seemed like they might be immune from this assault. One such retailer was H&M. H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (HNNMY) offers fashion products with a broad and varied selection for women, men, teens and children through retail outlets mainly in Europe. The Company also sells its products via catalogs and the Internet. The women's collection includes basics to tailored classics, sportswear, maternity clothes, accessories and shoes. The men's collections include tailored pieces, modern basics, leisure wear accessories, underwear and shoes. The jeans & denim includes traditional five-pocket jeans, trendy fashion jeans and denim models in organic cotton. H&M's cosmetics department provides a wide range of makeup, skin care and body care products. H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB is a subsidiary of Ramsbury Invest AB and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Stores like H&M provided shoppers in urban areas with access to low-cost fashions that were almost "throwaway" in nature. Buy clothing that was in fashion, but cheap and imported. However, we see from their latest results that even companies such as H&M are in trouble as internet competitors like Amazon-and even cheaper alternatives such as the numerous china-based web somerset the demands of the market and cut out the middleman.

H&M, whose margins were already based on cheaper products, had to discount even more this Summer in an effort to keep sales up. They also suffered from reduced foot traffic in their stores. Analysts note that they have failed to address the online sale issue, and while their web sales are growing--they now make up @25-30% of total sales, it has not been enough to compensate for lower sales in their brick and mortar outlets.

Company CEO Karl-Johan Persson noted that "the fashion retail sector is growing and is in a period of extensive and rapid change as a result of ongoing digitization. The competitive landscape is being redrawn, new players are coming in and customers' behavior and expectations are changing, with an ever greater share of sales taking place online."

Sound familiar? That's been the story for so many retailers lately. And what is the proposed remedy--in addition to increasing online sales? Moving into higher-end fashions that provide higher profit margins. Hmmm, we'll see.

For now, we continue our HOLD recommendation on H&M for 2017-09-27. Based on the information we have gathered and our resulting research, we feel that H&M has the probability to ROUGHLY MATCH average market performance for the next year. The company exhibits ATTRACTIVE Company Size but UNATTRACTIVE Book Market Ratio.

Valuation & Rankings
Valuation	n/a	Valuation Rank	n/a
1-M Forecast Return	-0.15%	1-M Forecast Return Rank	39
12-M Return	-5.32%	Momentum Rank	30
Sharpe Ratio	-0.37	Sharpe Ratio Rank	23
5-Y Avg Annual Return	-7.06%	5-Y Avg Annual Rtn Rank	32
Volatility	18.91%	Volatility Rank	72
Expected EPS Growth	40.82%	EPS Growth Rank	70
Market Cap (billions)	39.66	Size Rank	97
Trailing P/E Ratio	22.16	Trailing P/E Rank	58
Forward P/E Ratio	15.74	Forward P/E Ratio Rank	58
PEG Ratio	0.54	PEG Ratio Rank	60
Price/Sales	1.75	Price/Sales Rank	54
Market/Book	6.21	Market/Book Rank	23
Beta	1.05	Beta Rank	37
Alpha	-0.32	Alpha Rank	17