House of Fraser offer talks end
House of Fraser has announced that very preliminary talks regarding a possible offer for the Company have ceased.
The Company will be announcing preliminary results for the 52 weeks ended 28 January 2006 on 24 March 2006, which will state that in the 6 weeks since 29 January 2006 like for like sales were down 1.4 per cent. compared to the same
period last year, whilst total sales were 16.2 per cent. up including the Beatties and Jenners acquisitions.
The Company previously announced that it expected ‘…trading conditions to be difficult for at least the first half of 2006 and, in spite of continuing focus on costs, we expect some additional cost pressures in the next twelve months.’ Steve Davies, analyst at Numis said “This does not surprise us at all. While House of Fraser was a plausible target because it still has some property and there are decent benefits flowing through in financial services and from the acquisitions of Jenners and Beatties, we could not see how a VC could pay a mooted price of more than 140p and still make an acceptable return”.
