Un-happy anniversary for Card Factory as it sinks on full-year results

Card Factory saw its share price sink by nearly 10 percent on Tuesday after unveiling its full-year results for the year ended January 31st 2020.

The results shown a drop in net income of 4.4%, recording a £65.2m for the year compared to £68.2m previously.

A general decline in Christmas Card giving also appeared to hit the retailer hard which were reflective of a long-term decline in ‘Christmas Card Giving’.

The lack of bottom-line growth combined with the effect of the pandemic on the business more recently appears to have spooked investors. Since lockdown, the retailer revealed it has seen a 302% increase in online sales which may be a a sign of an accelerating decline of its traditional store operations.

Commenting on the ‘reasonable’ sales performance, Karen Hubbard reflected on the impact of cost pressures on the business that hit the bottom-line: commented:

“We delivered a reasonable sales performance in a challenging year for the high street, growing both our volume and value card market share in the mature and stable UK greeting card market.  Our profitability was, however, impacted by a number of recurring cost pressures and other one off operational costs which we were not able to fully mitigate.”

Karen Hubbard, CEO, Card Factory