All articles by Nick Bubb – Page 6
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Sales bad, profits good at WHSmith... again
Bearish hedge funds have been targeting several UK retailers in recent weeks, expecting their shares to go down after disappointing trading at Christmas.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: HMV - Something can be salvaged from the wreckage
The obituaries of HMV are being written, but rumours of its imminent demise may have been exaggerated, as there seem to be reasonable hopes that something can be salvaged from the wreckage.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Cost control won't work forever at M&S
With CEO Marc Bolland under increasing pressure to get profits moving up at M&S, it is unhelpful to his cause that current year expectations have had to be notched down again, even though M&S promises to get its act together this autumn.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: 7 days to save HMV's world?
Thanks to the support from its suppliers, HMV has much better stock levels and promotions than a year ago, so operationally the business is in good shape, but will consumers cooperate?
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: Will Sports Direct buy House of Fraser stake?
Mike Ashley is every PR man’s nightmare - he says what he thinks, no holds barred.
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Tesco - not very Fresh & not very Easy
Tesco didn’t help themselves by launching a store format with a range that was not very fresh and not very easy to shop in.
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OpinionComment: Dixons needs to tackle falling sales in southern Europe
Rather like Gatwick Airport, Dixons is split between the north and the south, and although life is generally grim ‘up’t north’, in Dixons’ case it is the other way around.
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Tesco's online operation is a ray of sunshine
As Tesco addresses all the problems in the UK store business, one area that provides a ray of sunshine is the online grocery operation.
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Which retail sales figures should we believe?
It is often said ONS lives on a different planet, as its Retail Sales figures are notoriously unreliable. But down in Newport in South Wales is the ONS starting to get its act together?
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: What can Marc Bolland do to improve confidence in M&S?
If you were CEO Marc Bolland what would you do to improve investor confidence in the ability of M&S to turnaround its underperformance?
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OpinionComment: Marks & Spencer - Last mover advantage?
Could it be to Marks & Spencer’s advantage that it is building a new operating platform just as its core customer base is moving rapidly online?
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Argos - plans are ambitious, but are they achievable?
Can Argos survive by responding to all the changes in the retailing world?
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: WHSmith - The margin was the message
Kate Swann’s real achievement over the past nine years has been engineering a huge rise in the company’s gross margin.
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Sports Direct - Ashley 5, the OFT 0?
Mike Ashley has been running rings around Sports Direct’s rivals in sports retailing.
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: House of Fraser - a forgotten hero?
Compared to its bigger and more high-profile department store peers, Debenhams and John Lewis, House of Fraser is out of the public limelight, but it is still a major player in the branded premium end of the fashion market.
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OpinionNick Bubb's Verdict: HMV expects Christmas sales pick-up. Is this credible?
The new senior management team at HMV have only been in place for a couple of weeks, but already they are blaming poor recent trading on “a lack of new releases”…and predicting a strong pick-up at Christmas. Is this credible?
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Asos - a super online story
The old adage of caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) sprang immediately to mind when the Bestseller Group began to aggressively build a stake in Asos just over two years ago.
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OpinionComment: What the 'mega-Thursday' trading updates say about retail prospects
Traditionally, the back to school trading period for retailers in early September gives a good guide to how the rest of the Autumn will pan out on the High Street.
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OpinionComment: Morrisons - playing the right cards?
It was interesting to hear Dixons’ chief executive Seb James say today that successful multichannel electrical retailing is like playing a three-card-trick.
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OpinionNick Bubb's verdict: Asda - is PR more important than performance?
Most businesses would say that performance is more important than PR spin, but this afternoon the formidable Asda PR machine is in full flow after the Walmart Q2 sales figures were published in the US, as Asda is “never knowingly under-promoted”.