Member Info for Pmoran1969

To be fair it was us and the other catalogue companies of yesteryear that invented the buy now pay later model. Selling Adidas trainers at 30% above the available retail price and letting customers pay 50p a week didn’t look the same as a credit card from mbna but that’s pretty much what it was.

It worked as a model and was great for customer retention but it meant that there were a lot of customers who simply wouldn’t shop with catalogue companies because they didn’t want to pay over the odds if they were not intending to take credit.

Currently we can price product competitively and offer a credit facility to those customers who want or need it and we are regulated the same way a credit card or loan provider is regulated. I don’t think we allow customers to pay using Klarna etc preferring to offer our own credit facility to customers so I don’t think the issue in the article is something that will affect us.

I’m not sure how things work these days with affordability checks and so on but One of the things the old catalogue companies were adept at was managing credit collection and credit risk such that they would accept customers who perhaps wouldn’t have qualified for a flexible friend. If Klarna and similar are forced to operate like a traditional credit facility as a result of fca regulation and this impacts who they can offer credit to it may even push customers towards the likes of us and very for those must have branded clothing or foootwear items or the latest iPad given their desire to own immediately but spread payments.

ASOS did however experience a slight drop in margin which they attributed to product mix, cost of customer acquisition and increased freight cost due to covid.

They also indicated that new customers made up for the fact that existing customers spent less due to less ‘occasion led’ spend.

So the concerns about ‘are people really buying dresses when there’s no where to go out?’ seem to be valid so the question is can ASOS continue to acquire new customers to offset reduced spending from the existing customers and how much affect will that have in their margin?

It will be interesting to see how the market reacts given the underlying message seems to be ‘we’ve grown revenue but at a cost and our outlook is that we will hit too end of estimates for fy2021 despite Covid uncertainty’.

Smithy - you don’t think anyone will be flying until 2026 never mind ezj paying a divvy!!!

Correction it seems I could paste the link after all!!

This was posted today by one of the regulars on the boohoo board (thanks ragtrade). Apologies I couldn’t get the web address to paste as a link but the article is worth a read and hopefully gives an indication of what we might hear from brown later in the week.

Very

For those who are not aware this arose out of Littlewoods Mail order, still based Liverpool but also a very s****y office in Victoria where the designers and increasingly buyers are based.
https://www.drapersonline.com/news/very-co-uk-enjoys-record-christmas-trade

One of the regular posters on boohoo posted this today (thanks ragtrade). Apologies I couldn’t get the link itself to paste but the article is worth a read and one would hope bides well for later in the week for brown group.

Very

For those who are not aware this arose out of Littlewoods Mail order, still based Liverpool but also a very s****y office in Victoria where the designers and increasingly buyers are based.
https://www.drapersonline.com/news/very-co-uk-enjoys-record-christmas-trade

Mickymix, I might be inclined to agree with some of your sentiment if brown group did not already have an established customer base and to some extent brands.

They are not trying to compete with the likes of asos or boohoo and will not therefore require the same marketing activity or related spend. They do however need to drag themselves out of their old catalogue viewpoint and addtess marketing and their product offering differently along the lines of how very have done.

The board know what needs to be done to continue to be a player in the space they operate in and have started the process in ernest. In the old days if you wanted to get a quick boost in sales or customer numbers a quarter page add im the mail on sumday magazine would suffice. They know thats simply not the case anymore and the relatively new ceo isnt there to hold everything back hes there to push if forward. And with the recruitment they have done thus far and plans laid out it seems to me like hes doing just that.

This company isnt necessarily ever going to wow the market with new innovative products or marketing campaigns but for my money (some of which is invested here) its got the expertise and the finances to get back in amongst the verys and nexts of this world and I predict an initial period of growth over the next 12-18months after which brown group will maintain its status as a steady company paying a steady dividend.

Im glad i got in here when i did last year and have no intention of getting out anytime soon.

Rag i urge you to accept the result graciously and not to challenge the postal votes or the whe system in general. For all we know there may have been elements of voter fraud but please consider the implications. If you start tweeting about how perhaps it really should have been you the next thing thay could happen is the boohoo board gets stormed by tcm and khallumama and who else knows!!!

Putting aside the question of why on gods green earth boohoo would want to buy n brown group you only have to look at the current ownership of brown to know that they are unlikely entertain an offer from anyone let alone boohoo given that it’s 45% owned by the alliance family.

Mickymix If brown group have benefitted from the increase in online sales experienced by everyone else this year then we should expect decent enough numbers. Someone mentioned the ceo having come from shop direct and they (nbrown) clearly need to get their act together if they want to cause very to start looking over their shoulder.

What I am looking for as a shareholder and what I believe the market in general is looking for is results that show that brown are capitalising on the online boom, are continuing to put the things in place to grow the business in the ‘new way’ and some proof that what they have done already is working/starting to work.

That might not mean we see a set of stellar numbers against forecast but the forecast isn’t all that anyway at the moment. It’s sometimes tough to interpret average results and guess how the market will react but the uptake of shares by existing holders in the recent offer Suggest to me a degree of confidence in what’s going on and unless the results are unexpectedly poor I see no reason why the share price won’t continue to be supported.

Steve the, just one other thing to note if you were not aware. Halifax give you the option to do automatic dividend reinvestment in both the share dealing account and the share isa and the fees for this are £1.50 (from memory) compared to £12.50 so if you are reinvesting divis that’s well worth it.

They also do what they can, a commission countdown event each month where dealing costs are something like £3.95 rather than £12.50 for a couple of hours between 1200-1400 on the nominated day (for both share dealing and isa share accounts). Worth considering if you are buying or selling stable shares. I’ve used it for periodic top ups or re-balancing but of course if I was wishing to buy or sell a share that is trending one way or another waiting until the 15th of the month just to trade cheaper wouldn’t appeal!

Stevebt I have a sipp with ajbell and if I sell a share the funds are immediately available to reinvest.

I hold a shares isa and a normal share account with Halifax and on selling a share the funds are only available a day or so later to reinvest. Halifax are relatively expensive with trading costs of £12.50 a pop but I am a buy and hold merchant so trading expenses are not an issue for me and so Halifax worked out as cheap to operate the account and like you I wanted the reassurance that came with a mainstream supplier.

My share account with Halifax only exists should I wish to invest additional funds and I have exhausted my isa allocation for the year. I have shares in my share account that I will want to move to my isa at some point but if I chose to sell and buy back because of the delay of funds becoming available when I sell shares in the share account I would be at risk of price fluctuations for that few days while waiting for funds to clear so I can transfer them to my isa and rebuy the relevant share.

Halifax offer something called bed and isa where they will sell a share in your normal share dealing account and immediately buy it in your share isa account. You pay the fee to sell and the fee to buy so would be subject to 2 x £12.50 charge per holding but it protects you from the risk of a significant price change because the buy is done immediately not a day or two later as would be the case if you did it yourself.

Things to bear in mind before you bother moving a share from your share account to an isa. You can earn £2,000 per year in dividends tax free and anything above that is part of your income so eats in to your personal tax free allowance. You have a tax free capital gains allowance of £12,300 per year so as long as you aren’t making capital gains anywhere else you have to have a pretty healthy normal share account before bothering to go to the expense of shifting shares to your isa using the bed and isa system.

I would certainly suggest an isa is the best place for shares as neither the profits or dividend are subject to tax and the shares isa operates exactly the same as the normal shares account in terms of prices quoted and operating the account are concerned.

Hope that made sense and was of some use.

Will lake and Palmer be on the train too when it leaves?

Does anyone realise what has also significantly changed since last September that no one has mentioned?????

yes

I’m at a loss as to what they are doing. It’s clear they took an initial position and then added to it. I thought maybe they had gone and taken the maximum boohoo shares the particular fund(s) would allow and slight changes up or down were related to them rebalancing as values of shares within the fund changed. But to be messing with it on an almost daily basis just seems quite odd.

I guess the most important issue is that two respected institutions from the US took up not insignificant amounts of shares and have retained those positions even if one of them is racking up the transaction fees!

Now dan i need to be absolutely clear about one thing first off and that is i personally wouldnt put ragtrade in this category.

However the phrase '. I think there is a direct correlation between these people and windows being licked,' is just about the best extract from a post I've seen this week :)

Now now dan. Theres no need to be like that. And you know as well as i do even if you got beat 45-love in the deciding set youd find a reason not to leave the court!!

I spoke to someone over christmas period who worls for very. They are high enough up the ladder to know whats going on there and whilst they wouldnt be drawn on numbers or percentages they conceeded that it had been a phenomenal year for them.

They recognise nbrown as operating in the same space but as a much smaller competitor but said they would be amazed if brown group hadnt gad a very similar experience to very.

I am hopeful that the update will be positive but i would like to see momenrum and would like to see brown get creative with their marketing amd at least attempt to give the likes of very a run for their money.

Maybe jacamo and simply be and even good old jd wiliams can exist as individual bramds within the n brown stable but i do womder if a rebrand and associated marketing push might be on the cards now the building blocks are in place to spring the company forwards. We essentially have a new bunch of customers and to a degree investors to attract to the business but it will require some effort on the companies part.

Sure we might never be an asos or a boohoi and I dont necessarily think we should strive to be but we should at least be able to hold our own with what is effectively another old catalogue company offering online shopping with a credit facility if we put our minds to it.

Thanks razor. I read your post every day when I do the rounds checking my shares for any new rns posts. I check my shares in reverse order starting with Ulvr and ending with abf so by the time I get to boo your post is usually there.

Can take a horse (or MattyBoy) to water...

But a pencil must be lead!!