Dr Martens slumps on Barclays downgrade

Dr Martens slumped on Monday after Barclays downgraded shares of the iconic bootmaker to ‘equalweight’ from ‘overweight’ and cut the price target to 140p from 174p.

The bank said that having stuck to its ‘overweight’ rating through several profit warnings, it is now downgrading due to weak Google trends/Similarweb data and a big second-half weighting, given macro risk.

It also pointed to increased capital intensity via store growth, pressuring EBIT margin/return on capital employed, and greater conviction elsewhere in its coverage, given the wider de-rating of consumer stocks.

At 1055 GMT, the shares were down 6.3% at 111.30p.