Boohoo co-founder cashes in £10.7m after bumper results

Carol Kane

Carol Kane, the co-founder of online fashion giant Boohoo, has sold some of her shares in the company, bagging £10.7m.

Kane, who is joint chief executive with Mahmud Kamani, yesterday sold 4.65 million shares, leaving her with around 46.3 million shares, equivalent to just above 4% of the company.

The timing could have been better for Kane – who sold her shares at an average price of 230p – as despite yesterday’s news of stellar trading performance and another upgrade to year end expections, shares fell around 17% through the day from a high of 265p to close at 218.5p.

The Manchester-based retailer raised its guidance for full year revenue again to be 80% ahead of expectations, as it posted a 106% increase in half-year turnover to £263m.

It was only in June that the company said it expects full-year revenue to February 2018 to be 60% ahead of expectations but yesterday’s half-year results show the incredible pace of growth, with six-month pre-tax profits up 41% to £20.3m to the end of August, 2017.

In June the company raised £50m on the stock market so that it could build an automated super-site of over 600,000sq ft, which will provide it with more than £2bn of net sales capacity to keep up with demand. The company said it will also continue to invest in price, promotion and marketing.

Market experts suggest this is the reason investors are miffed, as such investments are leading to slightly lower margins – gross margin was reduced to 53.3% from 55.3%.

Click here to sign up to receive our new South West business news...
Close