Great business, page-23

@Swage_17
This has been a helpful thread which is not what we always get on HC.
You're trying to evaluate the company's performance across the range of countries in which it does business and I don't think it's possible on the information provided through the financial statements and presentations.

@MULTINVEST has had a bit of a crack at it and it's appreciated but the problem is that these are a set of accounts for a subsidiary of the parent company.
The numbers attributed to a subsidiary of a parent company can be quite misleading when the accountants polish them to support tax minimization or to conceal the true performance from a local competitor.
That's not to say that the UK isn't struggling but I wouldn't base my thoughts about that subject on the financial statements above.
There's not much doubt that this company is doing very well, at least for the moment. The following table provides an opportunity to see just how well they perform when compared to some other retailers (the numbers represent the results for 2023):



Although the numbers reflect a very powerful performance, I suspect the risk is that these guys have milked as much out of their operations as is possible.
I can't imagine there being any real opportunity to improve gross profit margins, and the tight ship that it is, won't enable management to perform one of those cost cutting exercises that large companies often do in times of trouble.
And there's not likely to be many of those "sticky" customers that the IT companies always refer to.

So, to me anyway, it's all about keeping their tight, prescriptive processes in place and taking them to the rest of the world.
The following table is an attempt to present an idea as to how the company has performed on a per store basis across the last five years:



Of course, the Covid years don't help us much. My reference to "adjusted" means that my per store calculations have assumed that the new stores each year performed for exactly 6 months rather than the whole year.
It suggests to me that revenue per store has increased while profit per store has decreased which sort of aligns with your presentation which reflected a drop in EBITDA margins.
It's where those reductions have occurred which is the subject of your comments.

So, I think this is a well-run company with some smart people at the top. The problem is that the shares are priced for solid EPS improvement each year and my thoughts are that that can only come from extra stores, actually a lot of extra stores each year that must run on the tightly prescribed rules that have been applied to their stores to date and, at all times, with an eye on the fashion requirements of young people.
All of that is quite a tall order

Understanding where stores are performing well and where they're not would be helpful for investors but there's not much of that available.

I've owned a small quantity for quite a while now but have never been able to bring myself to purchase more which I'm worried I may regret in due course, hence my interest in this thread.