Hi, it's Paul here. Graham's busy, so I'll be writing Monday's report, at a leisurely pace, throughout the afternoon.
Today's biggest faller is;
Accrol Group (LON:ACRL)
Share price: 12p (down 57% today)
No. shares: 129.0m
Market cap: £15.5m
Trading update (profit warning) - I'm sorry to be the harbinger of doom, but this share is unravelling in much the same way that a faulty batch of its products (toilet rolls) might unravel, if a corner of the inner ply gets stuck, and you mistakenly rotate it many times, with the paper dividing into two different widths of single ply, neither of which is well suited to its original purpose, and have to be discarded. I've resisted the urge to write a more vulgar metaphor.
There was some Director selling recently, which looked like rats deserting a sinking ship.
This sounds absolutely horrendous to me;
As previously reported, the Group's trading performance in the current financial year has been significantly impacted by three major issues -
- an escalation in internal costs,
- input costs and
- adverse foreign exchange hedging.
The magnitude of the escalation in costs (circa 50% higher than in year ended 30 April 2017 ("FY17") has only, very recently, become fully apparent to the Board.
Also, the pace of progress in pricing actions to mitigate margin pressure has been slower than forecast but is now picking up pace.
The increased impact of these issues is expected to affect the performance of the Group materially in the year to 30 April 2018.
Some of the corrective, business critical remedial activities (outlined below) have been hampered while the Board transitioned to its new supportive composition.
The new management team believes firmly that the challenges facing the Group are resolvable, given time and experienced handling.
The successful resolution of these issues, however, will be a demanding task and one not without execution risk.
I don't know what to say. Other than, if you still hold this share, then you haven't read the above properly.
This has to be one of the worst outlook statements I've ever seen;
The magnitude of internal cost increases in 2017, combined with ongoing margin pressures, has impacted the Group's financial results and cash flow in the short term. As a consequence, the…
