Naked Wines’ finance boss quits after sales warning
A TOP executive at wine retailer Naked Wines has quit, weeks after its share price took a beating over concerns customers were cutting back.
Naked Wines, which sells wines from independent vineyards, said Shawn Tabak had stepped down as chief financial officer last Friday “by mutual agreement”. The news sent shares in Naked Wines down 2.3pc to 161.2p yesterday, coming after almost 40pc was wiped off last month following a warning over slower growth. The stock is down almost 75pc since the start of the year.
Mr Tabak, 43, had been in the finance role since December 2020, with the company having hailed his “understanding of the US market”, which it said would be “highly valuable and recruiting this role in the USA, our largest market, is another key step in our transition from British start-up to a Us-led global pure play”.
Naked Wines had, at one point, been owned by Majestic Wines before the two brands were split in 2019, with the Majestic stores bought by Fortress. Mr Tabak has been based at Naked Wines’ US headquarters in Napa, California – where the chief executive Nick Devlin is also based.
James Crawford, the managing director of the UK arm, will move into the finance role on an interim basis for the next year, Naked Wines said.
He had served as chief financial officer from April 2015 to Nov 2020 and is based in the UK. The switch at the top of the company follows an update last month in which it warned the economic and consumer environment was the most challenging it had been for some time.
In the year to March 28, sales had risen 3pc, compared to a 14pc jump the prior year, when the pandemic pushed more people to buy online.
It said it was expecting to break even for this financial year, amid “volatile” consumer sentiment and with customer retention rates having slipped.
Costs, too, have been rising and Naked Wines had said it could have been quicker to acknowledge the “inflationary pressures we saw were likely to endure” and to take steps to counter this. By not having acted so quickly, its margins have been squeezed.