Good morning, it's Paul here!
Thanks to theresa34l for pointing me in the right direction of interesting figures from Gordon Dadds (LON:GOR) - it looked too good to be true, and it IS too good to be true - I found the catch, after spending a couple of hours sunning myself, reviewing the figures.
In a nutshell, the catch is "deferred consideration". More on that later. It's an absolute ton of debt, basically.
Anyway, the figures are nowhere near as good as they initially look.
As always, with clever lawyers, who do you think is going to come out best - them or you?!
What a nightmare, I've just completely re-written this section from scratch, and lost it all. Arrgghh! Memo to self- must make backups.
Sports Direct
A flurry of late announcements after the market closed on Friday, should make for an interesting week ahead.
Final accounts - worth having a read of this, just for the entertainment value. There's a long belly-ache about how badly the Debenhams situation was handled. This is just posturing in my view. Mike Ashley's decision to invest in Debenhams was just a really stupid decision, and then he threw good money after bad. Even humble bloggers could see that DEB was not viable in its existing form, due to long & onerous lease commitments. Yet a retailing guru apparently failed to spot that.
The comments on SPD's stake in Goals Soccer Centres are also hilarious;
Based on the lack of engagement in this key matter, alongside our general concerns on the pervasive nature of irregularities, we as the biggest shareholder elected to vote against all resolutions including the reappointment of board members. The result of the AGM was in favour of the status quo despite our opposition and the evidence before the market's eyes, however the foul mouthed tirade and aggressive posturing of Chris Mills to the Sports Direct representative, attending the AGM and asking completely legitimate questions, was extremely unprofessional and unbecoming of a listed business to any representative let alone one from its biggest shareholder.
Pot & kettle, is the phrase that springs to mind!
SPD also has a stake in French Connection (in which I hold a long position), and comments as follows;
FRENCH CONNECTION
We continue to have an arms-length supplier/retailer relationship with French Connection,…
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