Seven months ago, we published an analysis of Crocs (CROX) titled "Is the Ugly Shoe That Ugly?" The stock was trading at around $89, the market narrative was poisonous, and the numbers were screaming something different from what the consensus wanted to hear/believe. The forward P/E was around 7x, the FCF yield was a staggering 16-17%, and a Sum-of-the-Parts valuation that assigned zero value to HEYDUDE still produced a fair value of $127 per share. The implicit perpetuity growth baked into the stock price was -4%, which essentially meant the market was pricing a company in permanent decline. Seven months later, with the stock trading around $137, hitting a new 52-week high, the answer appears to have been the former. But that answer, paradoxically, is precisely the reason this follow-up article exists, because the same discipline that told us to look when nobody wanted to now tells us to be cautious when everyone is suddenly interested.