Good morning, it's Paul here.

Yes, I'm delighted to be back! Graham is having a well-deserved holiday this week. I'd like to thank him for his terrific work in writing these reports during my 3-month sabbatical. I've been an avid reader over the summer, and have occasionally submitted sections for inclusion in Graham's reports.

On my first day back today, with legendary efficiency and organisational skills intact, I forgot to put up a placeholder article last night. Sorry about that. So here it is. I'll get to work on today's profit warning from Footasylum (LON:FOOT) next. Please feel free to add any comments below.




Footasylum (LON:FOOT)

Share price: 43p (down 48.8% today, at 09:31)
No. shares: 104.5m
Market cap: £44.9m

Trading statement (profit warning)

This company is a specialist retailer of trainers, focused on young customers. It was floated at 164p per share, in Nov 2017 by GCA Altium (financial adviser & NOMAD), and Liberum Capital (broker). So far the shares have been a disaster - currently down 74% on the price at flotation. I imagine those that bought in the float must be feeling that they've been mugged.

Checking back through our archive here, both Graham and I reviewed FOOT before it floated, here in Oct 2017, with us both having reservations, and wariness of new issues. Although I thought the historic growth looked good. Both Graham & I were worried about problems emerging after the float, as seems to happen quite often, sadly.

Although I decided to have a bit of a punt on it, but my application at the float was scaled back to zero - a stroke of good luck as it turned out. Although there would have been a 46% profit to be banked for flippers, 2 months after the float. It was, at least initially, apparently a successful float.

The share price then drifted down in the spring of 2018. The first bombshell occurred on 19 June 2018, with a nasty profit warning, which Graham reported on here. I'm reading that now, to refresh my memory. A dramatic deceleration in growth, and a cautious outlook, saw the share price halve on the day.

Here we are today, with another profit warning, and the share price halving again.

Profit warning…

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