Online clothes seller ASOS gave a detailed insight to analysts recently of its road-map towards its intended target of £2.5bn annual revenues within five years.
For the group’s third quarter, the market is expecting an increase in the top line of around 23%, with the home UK market driving a lot of the growth and with the US market providing some extra zip.
“Elsewhere, we expect EU to have improved, with a reduced impact from the terror attacks in France and the benefits of free returns across all territories (Numis +20%) and RoW [rest of world] to move into positive territory (Numis +5%) as Australia and Russia start to annualise-out weak sales/FX comps,” said Andrew Wade at Numis Securities.
Wade thinks the recent weakness in sterling gives the group additional fire-power to reinforce its international pricing position.
The somewhat more up-market fashion firm Burberry should also benefit from sterling’s slump.
On the other hand, if the EU referendum vote is going to spark caution across the world, it is likely that the impact will be felt on the sellers of luxury goods.
Barn-sized pubs operator JD Wetherspoon had beer mats printed urging its customers to vote in favour of Brexit. Since the UK followed that advice, the shares have slumped from 757.5p to 715p, but that is unlikely to prevent founder and chairman Tim Martin from mentioning the victory for the “leave” group.
Not that he is a particularly big fan of the UK government either, and its tax policies in particular.
Be that as it may, England’s exit from Euro 2016 rather than Britain’s impending departure from the European Union may have had more impact on the pub group’s sales.
Like-for-like sales in the first nine months of the financial year were up 3.2% year-on-year so the market will be looking to see if that rate has been maintained.
It will also be keeping an eye on the operating margin, which took a knock in the fiscal third quarter after the company responded to the UK government’s “living wage” initiative.
Monday
Finals: Pinewood Shepperton PLC (LON:PWS)
Interims: Frenkel Topping Group PLC (LON:FEN), Sthree PLC (LON:STHR)
Trading statement: RPC Group PLC (LON:RPC)
Tuesday
Finals: Alliance Pharma PLC (LON:APH), Begbies Traynor Group PLC (LON:BEG), Jaywing PLC (LON:JWNG)
Trading statement: ASOS PLC (LON:ASC), Michael Page International PLC (LON:MPI)
Wednesday
Finals: Heath (LON:Samuel) & Sons PLC (LON:HSM)
Trading statement: Barratt Developments PLC (LON:BDEV), Burberry Group PLC (LON:BRBY), ICAP PLC (LON:IAP), Wetherspoon (LON:J D) PLC (LON:JDW)
Thursday
Finals: SuperGroup PLC (LON:SGP)
Trading statements: Ashmore group PLC (LON:ASHM), Experian PLC (LON:EXPN), Halfords Group PLC (LON:HFD), Hays PLC (LON:HAS), Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC (LON:MONY), Workspace Group PLC (LON:WKP)