With a report titled "Restructuring to return French Connection to Profitability", the team at French Connection have start the real work of turning their fortunes around. I'm not really a details sort of person, so the main points are that they are selling the Nicole Farhi brand and loss making stores internationally. I hate to speculate about the future, but generally I'd say this is a good thing and the markets seem to agree as it's been up by over 10% today.
More importantly for me, the report comes attached to the preliminary results for the year ended 31 Jan 2010. The sole point of interest here is that the book value of the company has changed from £83.2 million at the interim report to £72.3 million now. The market cap is currently £43 million so it's still cheap by my simple metrics. All in all I've lost a little book value but gained some market value, neither of which should make me jump for joy nor cry into my tea. I wonder if they'll give me a discount on a new shirt?
