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Fashion chain Boohoo has appointed Tim Morris as independent chair in response to calls from major shareholder Frasers calling for the removal of Mahmud Kamani who now becomes executive vice chair.
Boohoo has committed to governance measures including limiting Mr Kamani’s influence over board decisions and operations.
In a statement, the firm said: “The board has decided to divide the role between his executive capacity and his role as the board’s chair, to enable the company to have an independent chair and allow Mahmud to continue his day to day executive role. Mahmud is an integral part of the leadership team and is currently focussed on the group’s young fashion businesses.”
Frasers, which owns just over 28% of Boohoo, wants to appoint Mike Ashley and James Lennon to the Boohoo board and has requisitioned a meeting for 20 December.
In a letter to shareholders Fraser says: “Since 2016, Frasers has more than doubled its profits and Mr Ashley plans to bring this same success to boohoo.”
Royal Mail losses shrink
International Distributions Services, owner of Royal Mail, returned to an adjusted operating profit in the first half, as revenues increased across the group and losses at Royal Mail shrank.
The company said that Royal Mail was on track to return to a profit for the full year, though the outlook for parcel services division GLS remains uncertain with the macro environment across Europe still “challenging”.
However, fiscal and regulatory backdrop is adding cost and inflexibility to the business, making universal service obligation reform even more urgent.
Adjusted operating profit came in at £61 million (H1 2023-24: loss of £169m), mainly due to significantly reduced loss in Royal Mail.
Grainger posts ‘excellent performance’
Grainger, the UK’s largest listed residential landlord and leader in the build-to-rent sector, posted what it called “an excellent performance” for the 12 months ended 30 September.
Its focus is south of the board where it has a £3.4bn operational portfolio of 11,069 private rental homes and a £1.4bn build-to-rent pipeline comprising 4,730 new homes.
Helen Gordon, chief executive, said it had been another year of accelerated growth and said the company now has “meaningful scale in many cities across the country providing good quality rental homes into areas of high demand”.
She said: “These new homes together with like-for-like rental growth of 6.3% have meant we have once again delivered double digit net rental income growth at 14% ahead of last year’s 12% growth.”
“The market opportunity for the UK build-to-rent sector is considerable with demand for renting growing and the shortage of rental supply worsening.”
This is the last financial year before Grainger converts to a REIT.
The board has proposed a dividend of 7.55p, up 14% from 6.65p last time.
JD Sports Fashion guides to lower end of forecast
JD Sports Fashion said that the volatile trading environment means it now expects profit before tax and adjusting items to be at the lower end of its original guidance range of £955-1035m.
Announcing a third quarter trading update for the 13 weeks to 2 November, Régis Schultz, CEO, said: “After a good start to the period, helped by strong back-to-school sales, we saw increased trading volatility in October, particularly in North America and the UK, reflecting elevated promotional activity and mild weather.
“Against this backdrop, we maintained our commercial discipline, improving gross margin by 0.3 percentage points while still delivering 5.4% organic sales growth. In addition, we made further, strong progress on our long-term growth strategy including opening 79 new JD stores across the world.
“We have performed well in the key trading events this year and we are well positioned for the upcoming peak season. The trading environment remains volatile though and, following October trading, we now anticipate full year profit to be at the lower end of our guidance range.”
