The booze specialist’s entrepreneurial boss Rowan Gormley has pre-warned the market of his plans to sell off the Majestic business in favour of focusing on the ecommerce operator he founded just over a decade ago, Naked Wines.

Despite the fillip of investment firm Gatemore Capital quietly snapping up shares over the past few months – an apparent show of confidence in that transformational strategy – the City has largely taken a ‘glass half empty’ stance to Majestic over the past year.

At the end of last June, its share price stood at 480p. At the time of writing, a slump in value that started following its interim results last November – when a £7.9m splurge on new customer acquisition at Naked tipped it into the red – had dragged the share price to 255p, leaving it with a market cap of just over £180m.