Black Friday 2015 versus 2014: One chart showing why this year’s shopping event is set to be the biggest yet November 15, 2015 Millions of shoppers made the most of Black Friday's bonanza offers last year, but some retailers were left wondering if the deal day was really all it's cracked up to be. Asda has already "called time" on a single massive sales day in favour of spreading out savings for customers, as have high street fashion chains [...]
Marks and Spencer, Carlsberg, Young & Co Brewery: Best of the Brokers for 13 November 2015 November 13, 2015 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com MARKS AND SPENCER RBC Capital Markets liked what they saw at Marks & Spencer’s summer season 2016 clothing preview so much, they made the retailer RBC’s “top pick” with a target price of 700p. The broker said he was encouraged M&S was [...]
Wall Street has worst day in two months – New York Report November 12, 2015 Wall Street suffered its worst session in over a month yesterday as lower commodity prices weighed on energy and materials stocks and comments by a Federal Reserve policymaker hinted at an approaching interest-rate hike. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 1.44 per cent to end at 17,448.07, the S&P 500 lost 1.4 per cent to [...]
Punch Taverns more than halves yearly losses November 12, 2015 Pub group Punch Taverns, owner of around 3,500 pubs nationwide, has narrowed its yearly losses by over half to £105m, from £240 million a year earlier. Refinancing of debt with a charge of £166m and the falling value of its real estate was mostly to blame. Shares in the pub company have fallen today by [...]
Black Friday 2015: Hoping to avoid Black Eye Friday? The key is preparation, preparation, preparation November 12, 2015 It is universally accepted that the scale of Black Friday last year was a surprise. It was the Eric Morecambe of retail outcomes – all the orders came in just not necessarily in the right order. As ever, you saw some retailers react better than others and companies’ intuitive values took over. What comes first? [...]
Asda’s ToYou teams up with online retailers for launch of parcel collection service in UK stores November 12, 2015 Shoppers will be able to pick-up goods in Asda supermarkets that they have ordered from other online retailers as part of a new service launched today by the Walmart-owned chain to boost footfall in its stores. The retailer said the new service, called ToYou, allows customers to collect and return orders placed with third parties at any one of [...]
Morrisons hires Post Office boss Paula Vennells as “restructuring” board strategist November 12, 2015 Could there be more changes in store for Morrisons? The struggling supermarket has hired Paula Vennells, the boss of the Post Office, citing her "restructuring" experience as being "invaluable". Vennells will join the board as non-executive director from 1 January. She is taking over from Johanna Waterous, who is leaving after six years. Vennells has been chief executive of [...]
Burberry beats expectations with flat profits and revenue November 12, 2015 Burberry has beaten expectations, staving off a challenging environment to post a marginal rise in profits and revenue. The figures The luxury brand nudged sales up from £1.1bn to £1.104bn for the six months to 30 September, while adjusted pre-tax profits rose from £152.2m to £152.9. UBS had estimated that profits would drop seven per cent [...]
FTSE closes up despite losses from Sainsbury – London Report November 12, 2015 FALLS in supermarket, miner and housebuilders’ shares yesterday did not prevent the FTSE 100 rising marginally. The UK’s blue-chip index rose 0.35 per cent to 6,297 points. The largest casualty, by some way, was Sainsbury, which reported profits had slumped 18 per cent and slashed its interim dividend by a third. Sainsbury’s group sales were down [...]
Macy’s and oil weigh heavily on Wall Street – New York Report November 11, 2015 INVESTORS sold oil companies and dumped brick-and-mortar retailers yesterday after a disappointing full-year forecast from Macy’s pulling US stocks lower. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 56.52 points, or 0.32 per cent, to 17,701.69, the S&P 500 lost 6.77 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 2,074.95 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 16.22 points, or 0.32 [...]