Yahoo Finance UK's Moonpig enjoys record week of sales due to Mother's Day
By Radhika Anilkumar
(Reuters) -Britons splurged on greeting cards and flowers for the country's Mother Day celebrations, helping online card retailer Moonpig to post a record week of sales and boosting shares as much as 20%.
Cards with sentimental messages and photographs, as well as flower bouquets were popular this Mother's Day, CEO Nickyl Raithatha told Reuters on Thursday.
The retailer, which operates in the UK and Netherlands, expects revenue to expand through 2024 in the high single digits, with the second-half of the year more likely to clock in a significant growth rate.
"The fact that people continue to send cards and the card market kind of has historically been very resilient to any economic cycle, actually gives us a lot of confidence that we can build on that going through the end," Raithatha said.
The 23-year old company, which witnessed a slowdown in sales due to the postal strikes at Royal Mail earlier in the financial year, changed course to be more resilient in the second half.
Royal Mail, Moonpig's primary postal partner, is currently under negotiations with unions representing employees who are demanding better pay and employment conditions.
The share price of the card retailer, which gained in the initial days after it went public in February 2021, has lost almost three fourths of its value since the listing as of Wednesday's close.
Shares were up about 15.1% to 130.8 pence at 0105 GMT.
Another British greeting card retailer Card Factory lifted its full-year earnings forecast in January after people flocked to its high street stores to buy Christmas cards as strikes deterred online sales.
Analysts at Peel Hunt, which called the Moonpig's future as "rosy", said that the business has strong growth potential which is being undervalued by the market.
The company reaffirmed its revenue and adjusted core profit expectations for its full-year ending in April.
(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Chizu Nomiyama)
