Raw Data Report: Polaris Industries, West Marine

Each day, Wall Street is flooded with stock research offering a multitude of conflicting investment opinions. As such, TickerMine is not in the business of providing more opinions. We believe that accurate raw data points can be used to gain insight in to the stock selection and valuation process.

Polaris (PII) Seen as Solid All Around ATV, Financing Restricted at Dealers

We surveyed ATV dealers in the past few weeks. Financing for ATV purchases is going away (or is extremely difficult) at 42% of dealers we spoke with. 58% of dealer said financing was still available. 67% of dealers report that business is slower than normal right now. 33% report that business remains near normal levels for the fall months. The majority of dealers held favorable opinions of Polaris ATV's but no model stood out. Even competitors models, like Honda (HMC) and Suzuki did not have a "hot" model cited. Most respondents noted that whichever ATV was the "best" model, that all of them were selling slowly currently.

Discounts Abound at West Marine (WMAR)

We conducted a small survey of West Marine stores and discovered that 100% of the stores are having sales on boating equipment in November. 100% of respondents also reported having new product in stock. Primarily GPS units and anchor line accessories were cited as the new items in the store. 87% of respondents reported that they do offer store credit at West Marine. Respondents also told us that West Marine was a better place to shop for boating gear than regular sporting goods stores because they offer a wider array of products, offer everything under one roof and because the employees are more knowledgeable about boating and boating equipment.