Nightmare for mattress firm as shares dive 57pc
Mattress business Eve Sleep lost more than half its value yesterday after it dumped its boss and warned it will not hit its profit targets.
the firm, which sells mattresses in boxes online, said it will not be profitable in the fourth quarter of this year as planned after sales fell ‘short of expectations’.
the warning came despite a 61pc rise in sales in the first six months of the year to £18.6m. sales in the UK and Ireland were up 62pc, with international sales up 60pc.
eve said chief executive Jas Bagniewski was stepping down immediately ‘by mutual consent’.
eve’s shares, which trade on London’s junior market, tumbled 57.2pc, or 39.5p, to 29.5p in a blow to stock picker Neil Woodford.
Woodford Investment Management is eve’s top investor, owning a 28.9pc stake. shares are down 76.5pc over the year to date.
a statement from the firm blamed Bagniewski and other top brass for ‘strategic missteps, underestimating what is required to develop a
meaningful footprint across continental europe, while losing focus on creating an aspirational sleep brand in its core markets’.
Chairman Paul Pindar was quick to take advantage of the fall in value, scooping 400,000 shares for a price of 29p apiece – a total of £116,250. the same number of shares would have cost him £264,000 on Friday.
Pindar said: ‘We have fallen short of our own and the market’s high expectations and as a result have taken the tough decision to make a management change.’
the firm also announced that it was partnering with bed retailer Dreams, and would offer its products in 193 Dreams stores. at a time
when many consumer-facing companies are trying to cut back their physical presence in favour of an online focus, rather than vice versa, eve said putting its mattresses in shops would help draw customers who preferred purchasing ‘through the traditional format’.
Ftse 250-listed Playtech, which provides online gambling technology to giants such as William Hill and Ladbrokes Coral, also had a torrid start to the week.
It warned in a trading update that revenue from its asian division had been hit ‘by an increasingly competitive backdrop’, and at the current rate annual revenue from the region would be around £62m lower than expected.
Playtech’s chief executive Mor Weizer said: ‘Clearly the recent trading performance in asia is disappointing. We have taken steps to further support our partners in the region.’
shares ended the day down 26.1pc, or 196.6p, at 556.4p.
But analysts at shore Capital said the price looked ‘attractive for its non-asian facing revenue
stream’. the FTSE 100 index did little better as it shrank by 1.17pc, or 89.1 points, to 7547.9.
top ten fallers almost entirely constituted heavy-hitting miners including third- highest faller
Glencore (down 3.5pc, or 12.7p, at 349.3p), antofagasta, rio tinto, BHP Billiton, anglo american and Fresnillo, which weighed the Ftse 100 down as copper prices hit a three-month low and the dollar began to rise. though pharmaceutical firm
Astrazeneca announced that two of its cancer drugs had received approval in Japan, its shares limped down 1.4pc, or 71p, to 5182p. Only four of the UK’s biggest firms finished yesterday with their share price in positive territory, with Micro Focus on top rising 1.5pc, or 20p, to 1343.5p, followed by Ocado, reckitt Benckiser and Centrica. elsewhere, breakdown company
The AA crept up 0.6pc, or 0.7p, to 124.85p as it proposed a £600m bond issuance. the aa said the debt refinancing would help reduce near-term risk for investors.