Consensus EBIT was about 185 or so acc to marketscreener. GS had 177.
GS made some comments this morning - but IMO they don't seem quite cogent with the outlook statement, as the analyst talks about a pull forward effect from cyber month etc, but the PMV outlook statement quotes EBIT, and the pull forward would be from Dec and Jan xmas and boxing day sales perhaps, which are in this half, not half 2. Moving the goal posts a bit to talk about a grater EBIT skew than predicted. Might have been at some xmas drinks last night ;-)
Extracted from Commsec
"
This morning PMV provided an AGM trading update, guiding the market to a Premier Retail pre AASB16 1H24 EBIT of ~$200m after a record ???Black Friday??? trading week. This compares to 1H23 $221.8m (-10% YoY) and is ahead of existing GSe of pre AASB16 EBIT of $177m. Taking full year FY24 pre AASB16 GSe EBIT of $285m, 1H24 guidance of $200m EBIT implies 70%/30% EBIT in line with pre covid 2019 split of 69%/31%. Given our recent
note on pull forward of demand into key "Cyber Month" resulting in a weaker Dec/Jan, this sits in line with expectation.
Furthermore, mgmt noted that significant progress has been made on the first stage of the formal strategic review that commenced in August where mgmt is considering a range of options including a possible demerger of PA and Smiggle and highlighted that this phase confirmed significant growth opportunities in their view. While we take no view on the outcome of the review, we
recently addressed investor questions around the feasibility of an international growth-path (focused on PA and Smiggle) and the potential for re-rating.
Our key thesis remains that 1) Apparel Brands growth remains increasingly challenged on post COVID softness and rising competition from international entrants resulting in market share loss; and 2) relatively high CODB as % of sales remains given rising wage and rent pressures. Our recent channel checks suggest that there will be limited growth in the retail space over the medium term and rental pressures persists with higher competition. Despite mitigating some risk in the near term given signing of longer-term leases in FY23 with more favourable starting fixed rates, we still believe that with below market sales growth, particularly apparel brands, retail margins will continue to be pressured. In FY24E/FY25E/FY26E, our group NPAT are -1%/-10%/-11% below FactSet consensus. Reiterate Sell."
(20min delay)