Shareholder launches campaign to ‘build a better Black Sheep Brewery’

A shareholder of Black Sheep Brewery in North Yorkshire has launched a campaign to ‘Build a better Black Sheep Brewery’ after expressing his disappointment about the company’s “mismanagement.”

David Nabarro, a Black Sheep Brewery shareholder and City of London corporate financier, helped the founder of the brewery, Paul Theakston, raise the money to start the business 27 years ago.

Nabarro said: “That was one of my earliest transactions as an independent corporate financier, so ever since, I have always had, a soft spot for Black Sheep and its excellent, prize-winning beers, and a long-term interest in our Company’s development and success.”

According to the most recent accounts published on Companies House, Black Sheep Brewery recorded a turnover of £18.5m in the 12 months to March 31 2018, up from £17.9m in 2017. It reported pre-tax profits of £1.2m, up from reporting pre-tax losses of £561,810 in the previous year.

​Yet he has expressed his disappointment over the “mismanagement” of the company and so is waging a campaign to start a shareholder revolt. 

In a strongly worded letter to shareholders, Nabarro said: “Time waits for no man and in sum, I believe the Theakston Family have long been and continue to abuse our Shareholders’ trust.   I therefore suggest the time has come to send a clear message to the Board and the Executive Management team that we the Shareholders are collectively not just extremely disappointed but also angry at their persistent failure to manage the affairs of our Company properly.”

His letter states: “Watching from afar, as year-by-year, one disappointing annual report has followed another through our letter-box, I have become increasingly frustrated and impatient with what I believe has been Paul and his two sons, Robert Theakston (“Rob”), our Managing Director, and Jonathan Theakston’s (“Jo”), Black Sheep’s Sales & Marketing Director, (together “the Theakston Family”) mismanagement of our Company.

“The most recent Report & Accounts to 31st March 2018 has been accompanied by an immediate 7.5% fall in Black Sheep’s notional share price to £1.85, and I need hardly remind you that over the last five years under the Theakston Family’s stewardship our Company has paid no dividends.
In fact, compared to five years ago, annual revenues, of which circa 39.94% were represented by beer duty, have actually declined by 1.04%.”

A spokesperson for The Black Sheep Brewery said: “Everyone at the brewery is driven and passionate to make it a continued success as a genuinely independent business, which has been built on 25 years of making some of Yorkshire and the UK’s most iconic beers, but we don’t stand still. We know our confidence is shared by customers, as the business has returned to profit and growing sales have led to investment in an expanded range of products including a new lager, and developing craft beers.

“Every day we all dedicate our efforts to supplying a growing number of outlets and stores throughout the UK. The company is supported by hundreds of shareholders from the local community and the comments of one shareholder activist, who has an agenda to destabilise the management of the business, should not distract us from pursuing our strategy.

“We are in the final stages of plans to open a new packaging facility and we are in the process of expanding further into outlets that we will own and operate. Our dynamic growth plan has been endorsed by the overwhelming majority of shareholders at the recent AGM, which was held only a few weeks ago. At that meeting Mr Nabarro did not take the opportunity to ask questions, which all shareholders are entitled to do.”