By coinnews 
00:00 Seana Smith
Well, Dick’s Sporting Goods is agreeing to buy Foot Locker in a $2.4 billion deal aimed at expanding international reach and boosting Foot Locker’s digital presence. Joining us now for more, Sam Poser, Williams Trading equity analyst. We always love to talk to about the footwear industry and the retail industry. Sam, it’s great to have you here. Um, and it feels like a lot of folks in your industry have been sort of scratching their heads about this deal, at least from the Dick’s perspective. It seems like Foot Locker investors are pretty overjoyed here. How are you thinking about it?
00:49 Sam Poser
Well, I think that the Foot Locker investors have a good reason to be overjoyed. I think that, uh, I mean, I put a note out. I, I think that I, I think that they’re, Dick’s is making a lot of focus on their expertise and product. The problem is they have a very different consumer base and a different model that, um, uh, a different model for their business that, um, that, that I don’t, that, that, that is very hard if you’re running big box sporting goods to all of a sudden shift to athletic specialty, even if there are some similarities to the product being sold.
02:07 Seana Smith
Is that why, Sam, Dick’s got hammered here today? I mean, it was down 15%. Is that, is that the worry for investors?
02:20 Sam Poser
I would think so. I mean, well, first of all, I mean, we haven’t seen a whole, I mean, one of the questions I kept getting asked was how many of these big retail acquisitions have we seen work in, in, in years? And the answer is not very many, if any. Um, one of my clients said, you know, how close to zero do you want me to go? Um, that’s one, that’s, but that has nothing to do with these individual companies, but, but the issue here is that not only is, I think, is the transition, I don’t, I think they’re gonna have trouble doing what they want to do for Foot Locker. But if, if we assume that Ed Stack and, and Lauren, um, Lauren Hobart, the, the principles at Dick’s, are gonna have to spend some of their time writing, you know, turning around Foot Locker, then you’ve got a problem because they’re going to take their eyes off Dick’s Sporting Goods a little bit, and that business has been great. So, I’m not so sure they can fix Dick’s Sporting Goods, but if you, if you take a little bit of focus off the mothership, I think you’ve got a bigger problem there too. So, and I think there’s some version of that sort of floating around.