Poundland’s pre-tax profits jumped 18.6% in its first year as a public company. Here’s what the analysts have to say.
“We believe Poundland has had a strong first year as a quoted company, delivering on its strategic objectives, with average number of weekly transactions up 9.2% to £5.3m, and a robust increase in average transaction size.
“We believe the accelerated opening programme and weaker comparatives leave Poundland well-placed to build sales momentum ahead of the important third-quarter trading period.”
Darren Shirley, Shore Capital
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“Results are in line with previous guidance and our expectations, and guidance for 2016 is also as expected.
“First quarter trading shows a significant slowdown against very tough comparatives and given relatively few store openings. None of these should be a big surprise to the market and are reflected in recent share price performance.”
James Collins, Stifel
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“Q1 trading for the first 11 weeks was very weak as expected against a very tough comparative (+18%), with actual sales up 3.5% on a reported basis, so like-for-likes are down an estimated 5%.
“Crucially, there is a strong H1 opening pipeline with net 40 stores to have opened vs 28 last year, so the profit phasing is likely to be more strongly weighted to H2, and more so for the key Q3 period, against weaker comparatives.”
David Jeary, Canaccord Genuity
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“Whilst Poundland trumpets today that it enjoyed a “very good first year as a PLC”, with adjusted EBITDA up around 10% to £59m on the back of 2.4% like-for-like sales growth, all the focus today will be on the trading update for the last 11 weeks.”
Nick Bubb, independent analyst
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