II Editor
24 Apr 2015
NEW ARTICLE: French Connection recovery unravels "The challenges LSE:FCCN:French Connection battled against last year continue to batter the troubled retailer and this year's profits will now be much lower than expected. Despite a series of disappointing results, the clothing store had shown ..."[link]
janebolacha
24 Apr 2015
Cantor Fitzgerald forecasting FCCN £3.5m loss for 2015/2016 "Terming the trading update "disappointing", Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Freddie George reduced his forecast to a pretax loss of 3.5 million pounds from a profit of 0.5 million pounds for the year ending Jan. 31, 2016."[link]
popes11
24 Apr 2015
Re: Profit warning They are burning the cash and not improving the trading. Previously the cash position was always relative to the SP so provided a margin of safety. I held these when the market cap was about the same as cash in bank. Now the market cap is about 5 times cash in bank with cash looking to be falling. So if previously they where valued at cash in bank this equals SP of about 10p. 2015 cash 9.9m SP 43p2014 cash 28.2m SP 70p2013 cash 28.5m SP 25p2012 cash 34.2 SP 20p
Meanbugger
24 Apr 2015
Re: Profit warning No chance these will fall to 10p. The good news is that wholesale and licensing are still doing well. The problems are on the already heavily loss-making retail side where they have a store closure programme. I am not actually surprised that they have had a poor Easter in the shops. When I was in a store a few weeks ago I wasn't impressed by the spring range where there seemed to be a lot of bright green which isn't a universally popular colour. Stock levels also looked on the low side. The key to investors making money from this share is for the management to stem the losses from the shops over the next 2 years while keeping up the growth in wholesale and licensing. An extra million of losses in the shops at this stage, although it is announceable to the stock exchange, isn't that material if you are holding the shares for the retail losses to be at least halved within the next 2-3 years.
popes11
24 Apr 2015
Profit warning I see these dropping all the way to 10p over the next year or so.
Meanbugger
23 Mar 2015
Re: Results This is what the London Evening Standard wrote after the results.French Connection’s founder insisted the struggling fashion chain will finally turn a profit next year after recording a third-successive, full-year loss which sent shares plummeting 15%.Stephen Marks, chief executive and chairman, said: “This is the third year we’ve improved things. “We are moving in the right direction and I hope next year we will make a profit again.”Marks said six more stores are due to close but the chain had also opened new outlets which he said were performing well. He added: “We’ve opened a store in Berlin very successfully and maybe if we close stores it doesn’t mean to say we won’t be opening other stores in better locations. We’ve dealt with things sensibly.”My view -The strategy seems to be to close the larger heavily loss-making stores but at the same time open relatively tiny but prominently located stores. These new stores promote the brand but also generate enough sales to cover their costs. On that basis retail revenues will continue to fall and losses should follow suit. If wholesale and licensing continue to grow then assuming nothing goes wrong we should see profits rising rapidly for the next 3 years. The only thing relatively uncertain at this stage is the gradient of the profits recovery i.e. whether it is £1m this year followed by £3m or £2m followed by £5m or even better.FWIW, Numis the brokers to the company are only going for £0.3m followed by £1.5m. This seems far too conservative as it implies that wholesale and licensing are not going to grow and the stores that stay open are going to do worse than before. I think Numis will be upping their forecasts as we go through the year so I remain optimistic.
Frankers70
17 Mar 2015
Re: Results I like your last paragraph MB (whilst agreeing with everything in the first btw). You've defined their future strategy and a deliver of 9p per share earnings would be a great result. A pay away of 50% - 4.5p would give a yield of 8.3% on todays 54p share price. Interesting enough for me to hold for the time being in the hope that the market views your analysis with some optimism over the coming months and the management deliver. Come on French Connection #COFC 
Meanbugger
17 Mar 2015
Re: Results Unquestionably these are fairly dreadful results with no optimism on the outlook. The recovery seems to have lost all its momentum and the only progress with the managed store portfolio is through store closures. Interestingly though the North American selling area has now fallen by almost a half in the last 3 years. They will now 'review closely' the store portfolio there. To me this looks like a managed exit from North America. The UK retailing performance remains dire and there was no mention of Toast in the chairman's statement which suggests it is struggling. The positive mention for the new Berlin store should be seen in context. This store is smaller than my local newspaper shop and has only a couple of staff. It is in the new LP12 Mall of Berlin which has not been a success since it opened. I think the company's strategy over the next couple of years is to shrink the retail estate to a core portfolio of stores which justify and promote the brand while hopefully breaking even. All the growth will come from wholesale and licensing. I had hoped this was a retailing story, the next Next, but it's not. BUT if over the next 2 years, wholesale and licensing continues to grow at the current rate to a combined £25m operating profits and retail losses fall to only £5m, overheads remain at £11m then you would have £9m of profits and earning of 9p. Wow! These shares could be very cheap indeed!
Frankers70
17 Mar 2015
Results Guess I was hoping the road to recovery would have been a little quicker and we'd be back to a dividend payment on a small profit. Guess the city was a little disappointed too especially with the continued challenging high street situation and perhaps division amongst brokers as to where future results will lie? An operating loss and £5m less cash. Hmmmmm. However, I'm still holding and hoping the share price will bounce off a 54p over reaction this morning. We shall see. As ever, GLA
janebolacha
08 Feb 2015
Biggest rise in UK clothing sales in almost two years [link]
Frankers70
03 Feb 2015
Re: Topped up And again and grabbed a further 4,000 this morning. Seems to be positive sentiment and hopefully backed up by decent Xmas trading statement, dividend payment reinstatement and brighter future outlook. We can but hope...GLA
chrisoil
28 Jan 2015
Re: NEW ARTICLE: Wealthy French Connecti... New french connection interviews on my chrisoil blog click on my blog see post below and coming out this week so keep looking in.
chrisoil
26 Jan 2015
Re: NEW ARTICLE: Wealthy French Connecti... New French Connection article on my new blog [link] worth a readSP moving results due next few weeks
chrisoil
20 Jan 2015
Re: NEW ARTICLE: Wealthy French Connection i... New excellent article on French ConnectionFrench Connection Recovery Play BUY at [link] or click on chrisoil author You can google the title as well. Details upcoming positive results
janebolacha
30 Dec 2014
From NEXT trading update From NEXT trading update this morning. Quite positive, NEXT up 3.5% today.Could this foretell a positive Christmas for fashion retailers?It looks sales were up 7.7%, of which 2.2% is from "new space", thus like/like up 5.5%?"Sales Performance to 24 December 2014Full Price Sales in the 58 days from Tuesday 28 October to Wednesday 24 December were up 2.9%, towards the upper end of the fourth quarter sales guidance range we issued in our October Statement. Total sales for the year to 24 December are up 7.7%. Sales (Vat ex) 28 October to24 December Yearto dateNEXT Retail +0.5% +4.6%NEXT Directory +7.5% +12.9%NEXT Brand TotalOf which net sales from new space +2.9% +7.7%+2.2% The graph below shows full price sales growth by week. The last and first weeks on the chart are distorted by the fact that Christmas fell a day later this year, on a Thursday. So week commencing 21 December benefits from an extra day and to compensate we have excluded the first day from week commencing 27 July."
