Last checked at 19 Oct 2009 07:00
19 October 2009
Flying Brands Limited ('Flying Brands' or the 'Group')
Interim Management Statement for the three months to 2 October 2009
Flying Brands, the Jersey-based home shopping group, is today issuing an Interim Management Statement covering trading for the three months to 2 October 2009.
Trading during the period was in line with management's expectations with sales for the three months from continuing operations of £5.53m (2008:£5.63m), 2% lower than the equivalent period last year.
Sales in the core Gardening Direct business were 30% higher at £2.31m (2008:£1.78m). Some of this increase was attributable to timing differences in the dispatch of products but the Board expect the like-for-like increase in sales in Gardening Direct for the Autumn season as a whole to be in excess of 15%. We increased our Autumn off-the-page advertising, following on from the success of the Spring season advertising campaign. Although Autumn is a more difficult recruitment season we did manage to recruit an additional 22,000 customers during the period, bringing the number of new customers recruited to date in Gardening Direct to 74,000 (2008: 46,000) in 2009.
Garden Bird Supplies' sales at £0.80m were slightly down on 2008. Total sales for the Garden Division were £3.11m (2008: £2.75m) a 13% increase over the corresponding period last year.
Flying Flowers' sales were £1.38m (2008: £1.58m). However, the sales in the corresponding period last year were made at an unacceptably low margin and we continued to drive higher contribution from lower sales in this business pending the re-launch announced on 1 October.
The Entertainment Division's sales declined by £0.26m to £1.04m. Listen2 sales continue to decline in line with its reduced customer base. Benham sales were 20% down on 2008, partly as a result of delays in timings of new stamp issues and partly as a result of our decision to refocus on the core club activities resulting in lower trade sales and lower sales of rare stamps and autographs.
Overall, Group revenue, including Greetings Direct sales of £0.28m (2008: £1.90m) for the period was £5.81m (2008:£7.53m).
On 15 October, the Group announced a placing of 2,344,582 new units to raise £1.76m before expenses. The new funds will be used to repay part of the Group's outstanding debt which was £3.81m as at 2 October 2009. The Group's net debt at that date was £1.40m (2008: £4.80m).
Stephen Cook, Chief Executive, commented:
"We are encouraged by the continued growth in sales and customer numbers in our core Gardening Direct business and we will go into 2010 with significantly more gardening customers than we had at the beginning of the current year.
At the interim results we said that our second half performance was reliant on a small number of key campaigns which were difficult to predict so we are pleased that the Gardening Direct Autumn campaign performed in line with our expectations. The remaining key campaign for this year is Flying Flowers Christmas. We have recently improved significantly the quality and range of the products and delivery options at Flying Flowers and we expect that we will start to see the benefits of these improvements in the last quarter."
For further information, please contact:
Flying Brands Limited 01245 228 300
Stephen Cook, Chief Executive
Anthony Gee, Finance Director
Smithfield Consultants 020 7360 4900
John Kiely
Notes to editors
Jersey based Flying Brands Limited (LSE: FBDU) is a multi brand home shopping group. Founded in 1981, it was admitted to the Official List of the London Stock Exchange in 1993. The Group operates the following divisions:
* Gifts (Flying Flowers, the UK's largest flowers by post brand, despatching over 700,000 bouquets a year)
* Garden (Gardening Direct, one of the UK's largest mail order bedding plants and gardening products operations; Garden Bird Supplies, a leading provider of food and accessories for birds and other wildlife)
* Entertainment (Listen2, the leading mail order audio books, DVD and video publisher and distributor; Benham, the collectables specialist)
More information can be found at: www.flyingbrands.com