After four earnings upgrades and a share price that has more than trebled over the past 12 months, perhaps it was not a surprise to see Boohoo.com's (BOO) shares fall on results day. A year of stellar underlying top-line growth was boosted by the £5.9m acquisition of PrettyLittleThing (PLT) - a similar clothing website run by Umar Kamani, the son of Boohoo's founder and chief executive Mahmud Kamani.
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But the marketplace is becoming increasingly competitive, and chief financial officer Neil Catto said operating leverage from higher revenue - boosted by a substantial proportion of non-sterling turnover (38 per cent) - had given the company room to lower prices. This contributed to a 320 basis point squeeze in gross margins to 54.6 per cent.