Member Info for DC2007

'Boohoo & the like (ASOS as well) will always do well.'

Quite an overstatement because recently, neither are smashing it. So how is that to be explained when other retailers have navigated the pandemic and still turned a profit?

I would hope the August update will make clearer how they're planning the capital structure, what's causing the elevated returns and how the freight issue might be improved.

Their market comms are too fuzzy for my liking and contributed to the SP decline as the business has hit operational problems and former profit growth sharply reversed.

Not how I read it re. the revolver. Facility is £325m in total, of which about £100m is already drawn down.

Unless they start generating more cash from business, they'll be using the remaining £225m of the revolver for what the expect will be reduced annual Capex of about £120m.

It's Boo's share of the UK clothing market PP1.

My post has context and used absolute numbers to be as plain as possible. You're indulging in a little sophistry by switching to relative numbers because it suits the ridiculous factoid you're clinging to. Also with context, you wanted to dismiss changes from other UK retailers in the same period as irrelevant!

Imagine one year your return on investments was 1.7% and the following year it was 2.1%. Now imagine describing that growth as 'massive' to savvy people — you'd be laughed at, lots.

I think you've made my point.

How can you, by definition, say market share growth was 'massive', then say you're not interested in what Boo's competitors (Asos, M&S etc.) are doing? That's silly nonsense! No company trades in a vacuum.

Here's some numbers so people might decide for themselves how massively Boo's market share increased:

in 2021, their sales were about 1.7% of total UK clothing. In 2022, that changed to 2.0%.

This is the 0.3% difference that you referred to as massive growth.

Yep, as I suspected, you can't back up what you claim as a fact because, in fact, it isn't and is instead, an opinion or hypothesis portrayed as something incontrovertible.

Because it's market ^share^, with share being the key word. Would you agree that this share is some portion of a whole? It would be quite normal to describe such a portion as a percentage.

So what was Boo's percentage in 2021 vs 2020 and what's your source? It's a dead simple question and the obvious response to anyone stating that there's been massive growth in market share. With such a sluggish overall market, at which competitors' cost was Boo's growth achieved? Based on what you say, one or more competitors must have had equally massive losses to their market share. Who?

Let's have before and after figures and the source. By definition, you must know Boo's current share of the UK clothing market and could state it?

Simple and simply wrong. C'mon T4G, sharpen up! I thought you were a business professional of some sort.

You claim Boo 'have grown market share massively in the UK in the UK'. I asked for the source of this fact. In reply, you've talked instead about the market size overall.

So, two problems with that dodgy reasoning. First, you've not shown Boo's market share compared to their UK competitors and how this changed vs the previous year. Second, you're apparently conflating Boo's actual double-digit UK revenue growth with forecast future market size. These are not the same thing: revenue could increase (from say higher prices) without resulting in a larger market share since it depends on what competitors sell too. That's without even considering various ways of measuring market share.

Faulty reasoning again I'm afraid. It's easily done though, but those exhortations of 'fact' and 'evidence' mislead by purporting a false authority.

Revenue, CRM, RAC, etc etc T4G. For anyone with shares or considering buying, a few things are very crucial, namely, estimated future cashflow & earnings, discounted to the present using an appropriate rate; ROE; the risk free rate; confidence interval for estimated values; the aforementioned compared to the metrics for any other available investment. All else is fluff.

It looks likely that Boo will earn not much above zero in the next couple of years; although I'd concede that even on this, there's a lot of uncertainty: look at their adjusted Ebitda margin guidance — the range 4-7% is huge!

Hard to take any confidence from that and it makes sense for market valuation, so the SP, to sit about where it is now, plus/minus 25%.

'Arnold, you do realise that Boo have grown market share massively in the UK in the last financial year.'

Please can you give the source for the market share figures T4G?

Not a clue why you've linked to equity (not market) research that is 10yrs out of date Ocean. Perhaps you've hit an iceberg.

It's the Debenhams made to look like all of Boo's other stable of websites, I.e. a bit tacky and cheap looking.

I didn't say volatility and late reported trades were linked. I suggested that Boo-specific and general market volatility explain the price movement and decline over this week; and this is a better and more plausible explanation than conspiracies about shorters and price manipulation.

Ockham's razor doing its thing. No evidence for anything else, these wild theories of chicanery.

Any market research you can show to support your theory ocean?

Saying Boo customers are going to trade up to Debs for a bikini (do Debs even sell them?) is like representing the normal human lifespan as skipping from high-school to nursing home with no in-between.

Very true Arnold. Best thought of as offering lots of trading opportunities: it's no longer an investable proposition.

No one I know in their 30s/40s aspires to own stuff sold by Debenhams. Yes, 30yrs ago it was popular with the middle aged and older shoppers who wanted beige stuff they couldn't find in m&s.

Boo could have made up a name of some new subsidiary to target that market, rather than shelling out £50m on something not worth more than a small fraction of that. Really poor use of cash – they spent it because it was there in their pockets. A similar thing will happen with the new revolver they've agreed: just watch them eat up the headroom until, not to long away, the whole £325m is drawn down. It's too easy for them to do.

Paying for Debenhams IP made no sense. It's a totally different market that Boo know nothing about. The brand had been as dead and fusty as a corpse for years before the business folded.

What were Debenhams' net earnings in the FY to Feb 22?

Or it's a usually volatile share that's reported underwhelming prospects to the market; this the same week that a clearer picture of widespread economic issues emerged and caused high volatility in markets around the world.

Have you any direct evidence for your conspiratorial explanation? Otherwise it's circumstantial and consequently the putative conclusion is, more accurately, speculation.

T4G

I've previously disclosed my position. It doesn't match what you want to say, so you contrive preferred but spurious conclusions instead — an impressively sweeping characteristic you have.