But how can you get a warehouse line of credit? The MBS group can help. What Girouard didn't say was disclosed in the latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Marvin Girouard, the chief executive and 32-year Pier 1 veteran (who said over the weekend that he will take retirement at the end of the fiscal year in February), insisted in a statement Tuesday that Pier 1's "cash on hand, available lines of credit and proceeds from the sale of the credit-card business will be sufficient to meet our expected cash requirements for a warehouse line of credit over the next fiscal year." "Dividend elimination signals a potential cash-flow crunch," said Lehman Brothers analyst Alan Rifkin in a research note. "We believe that Pier 1 Imports' dividend was one of the few positive signals of stability, given Pier 1's deteriorating performance over the past four years." By warehouse lines of credit Pier 1's thinking, however, taking out the dividend leaves more money to shore up its finances for a quicker turnaround. With the strategy struggling, the company is also finding itself inching closer to a cash crisis that has some observers now seeing little promise of a rebound in the foreseeable future.
