Thursday, 3 December 2015

Morrisons' fall from the FTSE 100 - what's the big deal?

As you know, a place in the FTSE 100 is determined by the size of a company's market capitalisation, in turn driven by share price, ROCE, itself a product of a company's Net Margin and rotation of capital i.e. sales/capital employed, which regulars will remember is stockturn and sales/sq. ft...

Over the past eight months, Morrisons' share price has fallen from £2.08 to £1.51, taking its market capitalisation i.e. market value of the company, down to £3.6bn, below the FTSE 100 hurdle rate, meaning that the stock market has not bought into the company's recovery plans...

Why does demotion to the lower league FTSE 250 matter?
First, some major investment funds track the FTSE 100, and will now sell all their Morrisons' shares, driving its share price down.

Second, since the key people in Morrisons are on share options, so the value of their wealth will fall...

But what can I do?
Whilst your job as a NAM is to optimise your brand in the marketplace, from Morrisons point-of-view, you are there to help them improve their share price...

This means driving their ROCE (think of 15% to make a difference), by helping them increase Net Profit (3% would make a difference, from its current negative territory) and increasing its capital turn (i.e. increasing its space productivity - sales per sq. ft. - and by delivering smaller quantities, more often, thereby increasing its stock turn of your brand. With a benchmark of £1,000/sq. ft./annum, you should easily be able to prove that your brand footprint generates at least three times that in terms of sales/sq. ft...

Meanwhile, remembering that their average gross margin is 25%, your brand's 30% retail margin should easily carry the 15% store running costs, and head office overheads of 5% to deliver 10% to the bottom line.

In other words, hone your skills in calculating the cost of everything you do for the customer, translate it into direct impact on their P&L, and Balance Sheet, and really connect with Morrisons' top-of-mind issues. 

You really think your brand matters to them other than as a means of improving the share price?

...and the big deal?
With the share price falling to £1.51, the resulting market cap. puts Morrisons firmly in play for those major retailers and private equity players that feel that at £3.5bn, or less, the company would respond favourably to a change of ownership and a little re-engineering....

Now do you still feel that the buyer's top-of-mind concern this morning is your brand's latest improvement in consumer blind taste-test performance?

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