Card Factory increases value by 50% since IPO

CARD FACTORY has increased its value by 50% in the year since its IPO as the retailer has maintained the speed of its sales growth and store opening programme.

The company was valued at £766m when it floated last May at 225p and after an initial wobble has climbed reasonably steadily to last night’s close of 341p.

Its value has increased by nearly £400m, with the Wakefield-based retailer now worth £1.16bn.

It provides a buoyant backdrop to today’s AGM which will look back over its first year as a public company.

The company will also update shareholders on its continued growth, with sales up 7.5% in the three months to April. It attributes this increase to “a combination of like-for-like sales growth, new store roll out and further growth in our complementary online division”.

Richard Hayes, Card Factory’s chief executive, said: “Our value retail proposition, built on our long-established vertically integrated model, remains highly differentiated, extremely difficult to replicate and, importantly, very attractive to the customer.”

Last month it brought its transactional website in house and plans to grow the revenues – from an acknowledged “very small base” – from cardfactory.co.uk once trials have been completed.

It continues to open stores across the country, adding a total of 19 in its first quarter as it expects to add about 50 stores in the year to January 2016, when it plans to have about 820.

He added: “Following on from our record performance last year, we have had a positive start to our new financial year, with consistently strong revenue growth and cash generation and I remain confident that the group will achieve the board’s expectations for the full financial year.  

“We are also pleased to have further developed our online proposition through the launch of a new Card Factory website, which we are sure will be well received by our customers who will benefit from its enhanced functionality and access to a greater product range.”

The group said it “remains highly cash generative” and had reduced net debt by £11.7m to £91.9m in the first quarter.

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