Asos bosses snap up cheap shares after day of horror for fashion sector
Asos boss Nick Beighton and chairman Adam Crozier have snapped up thousands of shares in the company in a show of confidence following the retailer’s profit warning.
The two executives each bought shares worth roughly £100,000 this morning after the company saw £1.3bn wiped off its value in a disastrous day of trading.
Beighton and Crozier bought the shares at £27.35 and £26.71 respectively, a huge reduction on the firm's Friday closing price of £41.91.
The online fashion retailer reduced its forecasts for the full year in an unexpected trading update yesterday, saying it had seen the “weakest growth in online clothing sales in recent years” in November.
The warning sparked a retail stock sell-off across Europe, and shares in Asos closed down almost 40 per cent yesterday.
Shares in Asos levelled today, closing down a marginal 0.5 per cent, but remain down over 60 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald and Jeffries slashed their full-year profit forecasts for Asos by 55 per cent.
Both physical and online retailers have reported disappointing sales in the run-up to Christmas, as Black Friday discounting disrupts traditional consumer behaviour in the festive period.
“Spending in the lead up to Christmas now appears to take place over a longer period of time, thus creating a smoothing effect for retail sales growth,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.
But some retailers have defied the widespread retail gloom to post positive updates in pre-Christmas trading.
Angling Direct today posted a 32 per cent rise in sales in the four months to the end of November, while department store John Lewis said its sales had swung back to growth last week.