According to The Times at the weekend the UK’s largest garden centre chain, Dobbies, is gearing up for a return to the stock market after posting a jump in sales.
They reported that sales were up by 2 per cent (actually 12% see story below) to £166 million in the year to the end of February on the back of six new stores while like-for-like sales rose by 5 per cent. Underlying earnings grew by 35 per cent to £7.4 million.
Andrew Bracey, the chairman of Dobbies, said the stock market is the “natural place” for the business and it will look to float “in a year or so”.
You can read the full story at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/garden-centre-chain-dobbies-plants-idea-of-float-as-sales-rise-shx3sdpmr
Today, Dobbies CEO Graeme Jenkins told GTN Xtra: It's an option for the business. It really depends on what's happening in the sector, what's happening in the economy, what's happening in the market. And you can only really assess that at the right time. Fundamentally, we are building a platform for growth. We would like to acquire and build more garden centres. That's our reason for being here, but there isn't a fixed number of garden centres we want to get to. There isn't a fixed time line, it is really what makes sense at that time that fundamentally improves the quality of the business."
"A month ago we updated our rolling three year plan and that has a view but it has no number on how many more garden centres we would like to acquire, because that's not what it's about. It's about it's about the quality of the business, because fundamentally you're you're measured in whatever ownership structure we we have, by the return rather than the number of garden centres you've got. So, that's the focus."