Week Ending: AO in a spin; devolution & more
IT’S not been a good week for AO World after the online white good retailer’s shock profit warning sent shares spinning an eyewatering 47% at one stage.
While any hint of bad news is leapt upon by traders, and a first year profit warning is far from ideal, Week Ending feels such a the share price plunge was overcooked.
AO has not suddenly become an acronym for All Over. It is still the same high-growth business with a model of delivering excellent value and service to customers.
By all accounts John Roberts – AO’s founder and chief executive -is a fairly phlegnmatic type and not a man to shirk a challenge.
He will need all his northern grit to rebuild investors’ faith, and must shrug off the ineviable brickbats that will surely come his way.
As sure as eggs is eggs, the same London-based media titles that built him up a year ago – feting him as the best thing to come out of Bolton since Warburtons – will be on his back. Week Ending is hoping he can prove the doubters wrong and demonstrate that the bad news was A One-off.
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SO speculation has proved correct and it’s going to be friends reunited over the Pennines after ex Tesco FD Andy Higginson – now chairman at Morrisons – hired his former Tesco colleague David Potts as the grocer’s new CEO.
Week Ending has known Potts for well over a decade and is backing him to rejuvenate the Bradford-based supermarket. I think the chain’s iconic founder Sir Ken may even approve, but for the fact that Potts is a Lancastrian!
Anyone who can build a stellar career at Tesco, rising from lowly shelf stacker in Ashton-under-Lyne to the boardroom, where he was first retail and logistics director and then head of its Asian business, clearly knows his onions, and how to graft.
So good luck, it’ll be a tough challenge, but it’s not mission impossible.
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While we’re on the topic of good and bad weeks, news that Manchester is now going to get devolved powers to control £6bn of NHS and social care budgets, makes one wonder where it’s going to end.
It really is looking like the republic of AGMA – we just need our own head of state – or mayor – to give its proper title.
Will it be Mayor Richard (Leese) or Mayor Tony (Lloyd)? Answers on a postcard please!
