LinkedIn23 Apr 2024 07:32
“One thing I’m not short on is receiving advice.
Every day people tell me how THG should do things differently. From advisors, commentators, investors, friends, family, or even strangers when out for a family dinner – each have plenty to say. Naturally, it's ramped up further since listing.
I’ve learned to suck it up and listen to most advice….and then to rarely act on it! Listening, processing and then discarding 95% of advice, is super valuable.
Why?
If we acted on all the advice, it would be as effective as drinking water from a fire hose. Most people sharing their views are unaware countless others are advising the complete opposite.
What’s worse, people often change their advice just a few weeks after giving it – “I’ve had time to reflect and now I think…”. OK, that’s great, lucky for us we reflected first before acting on the last advice!! Imagine if we ran THG that way, shifting strategy with the wind, from one month to the next.
Most advice is naturally biased, driven by personal needs or agenda, even if not intentionally. It’s human nature – persuade others to do things that benefit you. Lots of people want lots of things, and so there’s a lot of persuasion, especially when on the LSE.
But in amongst all the noise, there’s always the 5% valuable, golden pieces of advice that are worth all the noise. This is like finding pearls after cracking open a million oysters. We all need to be drawn to these people and avoid the flip-flopping/self-interest ones like the plague.
Today, we posted our Q1 trade update. THG has had a strong start to 2024, delivering +4.5% Revenue growth, our 5th consecutive quarter of improvement.
This time last year the team and I were doing investor calls after our Q1 23 update. We were busy overhauling both the Beauty & Ingenuity business models, improving them, making them stronger for the years ahead. This was negatively impacting Beauty & Ingenuity revenues in early 2023 – an inevitable but small sacrifice to make.
On the Investor/City calls, we constantly faced the same question: “why don’t you sell or close Beauty and Ingenuity, and just keep Nutrition? The Group would be valued at least double if you did”.
The answer was always the same: “Errmm, because that would be stupid!” 😯
Fast forward to Q1 24, Beauty delivered a whopping +11.1% revenue growth, and Ingenuity +5.9%. Both businesses are clearly in rude health.
By contrast, Nutrition sales declined -5.8% in Q1 as we phase out products to major new branding, positioning Myprotein for a big offline push into global grocers & retail.
So it’s a good job we stood our ground and didn’t act on knee jerk advice. Given Nutrition sales dipped in Q1 24, maybe this time we'll be asked to close or sell Myprotein, the world's biggest Nutrition brand??? 😂
A good piece of advice that's always stuck with me is that “nobody can walk in your shoes”. Sure, listen to all the advice, but it’s do
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