Cooking supplier burnt by cost of living crisis

SHARES in Pro Cook tumbled after it became the latest company to feel the squeeze from the cost-of-living crisis.

The cookware retailer – which was set up in a Gloucestershire cottage in 1996 and listed on the stock market in London last year – warned profits this year would come in between £4m and £6m.

That compares with an expected £10m profit last year, though it has yet to report figures for the 12 months to April 3 2022.

Pro Cook was set up when Daniel O’Neill and his mother Peggy sold pots and pans from their cottage in Cheltenham.

O’Neill, who is still chief executive, said ‘clear and numerous pressures on consumers’ have hit spending – including on the kitchen goods it sells online such as knives, plates and chopping boards.

‘Whilst we are still seeing lots of new customers discovering the Pro Cook brand and buying our products, it is clear that many are tightening their belts,’ he said.

‘This creates a difficult shortterm trading environment.’ Pro Cook said it now expects revenues for the year to be ‘broadly in line’ with the £69.2m it made last year.

Shares fell 40.3pc, or 31.4p, to 46.6p, wiping £18.4m off the value of the stake held by O’Neill and his family.

The stock has lost 68pc of its value since listing on the stock market in November at 145p a share. Its value has fallen from £158m to just £51m.

On a day of turmoil on financial markets, the FTSE 100 index fell 2.1pc, or 158.69 points, to 7317.52 and the FTSE 250 was down 2pc, or 400.08 points, to 19,673.32.

The sell-off was mirrored around the world and came after official figures showed inflation in the US hit 8.6pc last month – the highest level for more than 40 years.

There were also mounting concerns of fresh Covid lockdown measures in China.

With the global economic outlook darkening, mining stocks took a hit as metal prices fell.

Aluminium prices fell 3pc to their lowest level in nearly six months while copper was down nearly 2pc.

‘Copper is coming under several sorts of pressure,’ said Nitesh Shah, commodity strategist at exchangetraded fund provider WisdomTree.

‘The lockdowns aren’t ending as quickly as hoped and China’s zeroCovid policy is very damaging for economic growth.

‘You’ve also got central banks in other parts of the world maintaining a very hawkish tilt and that puts into question whether economic growth outside of China is going to decelerate faster.’

In the FTSE100, Anglo American fell 7.5pc, or 291.5p, to 3613p, Glencore dropped 5.2pc, or 27.7p, to 505.5p and Rio Tinto slipped 3.6pc, or 210p, to 5690p.

FTSE 250 commodity trading and mining company Ferrexpo fell 8.7pc, or 15.6p, to 164.3p.

Back in the top flight, safety equipment maker Halma fell 3.4pc, or 74p, to 2088p after analysts at Jefferies cut its target price to 1960p from 2200p ahead of next week’s full-year results.

While China accounts for around 7pc of the group’s revenue, this was well below the 15pc that had been expected to be met by as long ago as 2015.

Jefferies also reiterated its ‘underperform’ rating, citing some of Halma’s ‘high-quality peers’ who are more exposed to China.

In the second tier, investment firm Apax Global said the Apax X Fund has sold its controlling stake in MyCase, provider of cloudbased legal practice management software and payment services, for around £19.2m to rival AffiniPay.

Apax Funds said it will still hold a small stake in MyCase following the deal. Shares climbed 11.7pc, or 21p, to 200p.