Analysis

Introduction

Shares are down 17% this morning. Last month I wrote about French Connection:

"This is a strange one, I like low-risk situations and nothing seems lower risk than 50% of the market cap in cash. The problem is that the absolute figures here are just as large. There is an attractive business somewhere but it is mixed up with stuff that clearly isn't attractive. I can see why someone would buy the stock at the current price, I wouldn't be surprised if it does well. Today though, there just isn't enough sign that management really want to grapple with the issues facing the company. Until they do, the risk is just going to be too high here."

The only new piece of information, apart from the miss on sales, is that the store closing plan is now being accelerated.

Marks' Madness

My view here is that investors should continue to keep clear. The question you have to ask every time is: Are these problems secular or cyclical? Does this company have structural issues? Are the recent trends positive or negative? The key issue here is that the retail business is just totally uncompetitive but Marks just won't shrink it at the pace that is clearly required.

The catalyst for this warning is the weak trading performance after the year end and through Easter. Trading has been consistently poor for a while though. L4Ls were down 300bps last year, much weaker in the second half, but I don't get the impression there is any sense of crisis here.

The decision to accelerate the store closures from the few expected this year is clearly the right move but this just highlights how reluctant management has been. Not only should this have been started ages ago, it should have been completed by now. Mr Marks has been reluctant to move though and this shows just how reluctant management has been to make these decisions. The problem is that we have to defer to the judgement of Mr. Marks, and he has been consistently wrong.

What we can learn?

French Connection nicely demonstrates two issues: over-reliance on quantitative analysis and the problems of minority ownership. First, on a quantitative basis, French Connection does look cheap but on any other basis, it clearly isn't. There are attractive parts of the business but, as I say above, they are jammed onto parts that aren't attractive at all. Quantitative investing does work but there are…

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