Fashion brand Quiz will need more funding by early 2025
A late newsflash: UK fashion brand Quiz has just warned shareholders that it will need extra funding by early next year, after a disappointing Christmas.
Quiz has told the City that it made a loss of £4.7m in the six months to 30 September, compared with a loss of £1.5m a year earlier.
Since then, it admits, it suffered a “marked decline in traffic both online and in-store” in November.
And in December, while online revenues have been broadly stable year-on-year, they have fallen again in physical stores.
As of yesterday, Quiz says, it had net borrowings of £3.5m, giving it £500,000 of headroom within its £4.0m of bank facilities.
It warns:
Given the disappointing level of revenues in the important Christmas trading period, as announced on 6 December 2024, the cash headroom available to the business is less than previously anticipated.
As a result, the Board anticipates that additional funding will be required by the Group in early 2025.
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Closing post
Time to wrap up…
After a weak Boxing Day, UK, shoppers are returning to the high street today in greater numbers than last year.
New data from MRI Software shows that footfall across all UK retail destinations had risen by +8% as of 12pm, compared to 27th December 2023.
That might help the sector, where the number of UK retailers on the brink of collapse has risen by a quarter in the final three months of the year, driven by a combination of rising business costs and weak consumer confidence, according to a report.
The proportion of retail businesses classed as being in “critical” financial distress increased by 25% to 2,124 in the fourth quarter compared with the previous three months, the insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor said.
The general retail sector is under most pressure, with a 29% quarterly increase in businesses in critical financial distress, rising to 1,457 from 1,127 in the third quarter.
Stocks on Wall Street have fallen in morning trading in New York…
…while a rally in Japan pushed the Nikkei to a five-month closing high….
…and South Korea’s won has dropped to a 16-year low after lawmakers voted to impeach the country’s acting president.
Thousands of Land Registry workers have voted to strike in a dispute over office working.
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