Results round-up

SuperGroup, which was forced to publish highlights of its full-year results early on Friday after a preliminary draft of the numbers was stolen from an employee, has reported an 18.4% jump in pre-tax profit.

In the 52 weeks to 29 April, underlying pre-tax profit rose to £87m from £73.5m on revenue of £752m, up 27.4% on the year before. Like-for-like retail sales grew 12.7%.

The clothing retailer and owner of Superdry, which lifted its ordinary dividend by 20.7% to 28p per share, said sales were boosted by a weaker pound and new store openings. E-commerce sales were up 35% in the period, while wholesale revenue was 43.2% higher on the year.

The company said the Brexit vote last June and fluctuating exchange rates have had the most significant direct impact. It said the Superdry brand has proved resilient while the increased exposure of the business to different countries, markets and currencies has been important in providing some insulation from that impact, with 72% of its total sales volume now from outside the UK.

Chief executive officer Euan Sutherland said: "SuperGroup has made further significant progress this year, delivering growth in sales, profit and the ordinary dividend as we maintained momentum against all elements of our strategy. Our focus on delivering long-term sustainable growth continues, through a multi-channel approach that balances a disciplined owned and franchised store opening programme with further development of our reengineered wholesale channel and strong e-commerce proposition.

"The group is globally diversified and financially strong and we remain confident in our strategy to further embed Superdry’s position as a global lifestyle brand. Investment in infrastructure is underpinning our global growth plans and creating future leverage opportunities while ongoing product innovation and new social and digital marketing campaigns are introducing new customers to the Superdry brand.”

Canaccord Genuity said: "The key message for us is that the company's strong growth is disciplined and well-planned across channels and geographies as well as being under-pinned by infrastructure investment and product innovation. The brand is in excellent health, and we are now in a phase where we expect recent investment to start to be leveraged."

Shares in Plus500 jumped on Monday after the online trading platform service provider said it expects profit and revenue for the year to the end of December 2017 to be "significantly ahead" of current market expectations.

The group said the business has continued to trade "very strongly", with the first two quarters of the year seeing "very positive" trading which has exceeded the board's expectations, with strong new customer sign-ups and reduced average user acquisition cost. Overall this has delivered a higher earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin than the same period last year.

The company also expressed confidence that it will be able to adapt to any proposed chances by the Financial Conduct Authority and European Securities and Markets Authority.

Chief executive officer Asaf Elimelech said: "We have had a very successful half year, significantly ahead of our expectations. This puts us in a strong position for the remainder of the year. We are confident that our flexible business model will enable us to adapt to the upcoming regulatory changes and gives us a competitive advantage that will enable us to deliver another excellent performance this year."

Plus500 added that the outcome for the full year will be subject to the balance between the benefit of the positive trading conditions from the two quarters continuing, set against the possible negative impact of the expected regulatory changes in a number of the countries in which it operates.