Sports Direct reports annual results on Thursday – and what a year it’s been for Mike Ashley and his increasingly sprawling retail empire.
After a couple of years under attack from MPs and shareholders over working conditions at Sports Direct’s warehouse, Ashley has attempted to reinvent himself as the saviour of the high street.
Sports Direct’s billionaire boss has made an array of acquisitions and attempted purchases of struggling businesses. The biggest was House of Fraser, which Sports Direct bought out of administration last August for £90m. Since then the company has also bought Evans Cycles, Sofa.com and Game Digital.
He also tried unsuccessfully to buy Debenhams and Findel, the online retail and education group. Other companies Ashley has considered buying over the past year include Patisserie Valerie, LK Bennett and Hamleys.
Some analysts argue that this flurry of deal activity makes more sense than it might appear. They say the acquisitions give Ashley increased buying power. Evans complements the Sports Direct retail business, and Sofa.com is already a supplier to House of Fraser.
But the deals have increased the company’s exposure to the UK high street when the retail market is under strain as shoppers move online, making business rates, rents and rising wages more onerous. In addition, household budgets remain tight and the economy is slowing down.
Ashley acknowledged these pressures in December, when he warned the high street was at risk of being “smashed” by weak trading. At the same time he called for a tax on retailers that make more than a fifth of their sales online, to stop the internet killing traditional high streets.
Sports Direct has not published an update on trading since late 2018, leaving analysts in the dark about its performance this year and wondering what the balance sheet looks like after Ashley’s acquisition splurge.
In December, Sports Direct revealed House of Fraser was losing nearly £3m a week. Those losses hit the performance of the Sports Direct group, which reported a 27% decline in underlying profits to £64.4m in the first half of its financial year.
The independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said: “The company has said nothing about its performance since the interims in December, with all the focus on the bizarre acquisition spree. I suspect that trading in the core UK sports retail business has been disappointing and that Mike’s acquisitions have been pretty disastrous – particularly House of Fraser.”
Ashley is moving up in the world after building his empire selling cheap sportswear in rough and ready stores. His avowed aim is to turn Sports Direct into “the Selfridges of Sport” and House of Fraser into the “Harrods of the high street”. This aspiration may lie behind the recent departure of Karen Byers, his right-hand woman for 28 years and the embodiment of the company’s traditional bargain-basement strategy. Michael Murray, the 29-year-old partner of Ashley’s daughter, whose job is “head of elevation”, is the rising star at the business.
Ashley’s dominance of the company he founded is so great that it’s easy to forget he owns only 61.5% of Sports Direct. Many fund managers have grown weary of dealing with the company and have sold their shares.
Ashley will present results for the year to end April from the flagship Oxford Street branch of his upmarket Flannels chain, which is due to open soon. There will be plenty to talk about for those with the willpower.
