Best of the Best shares fall on decline in customer engagement By Investing.com

By Samuel Indyk

Investing.com – Shares in Best Of The Best (LON:BOTB) were actually the worst of the worst on Wednesday despite the company announcing an over 200% increase in profit for the year ended 20th April. Although the company had a strong year last year, they said customer engagement had decreased since the easing of lockdown restrictions.

Financial Results

The company, which runs online competitions to win cars and prizes, said revenue increased 157% in the financial year to £45.68mln.

This saw profit before tax balloon from £4.19mln to £14.06mln, a 236% increase and saw the company propose a final dividend of 5 pence per share and a special dividend of 50 pence per share.

“I am pleased to announce strong revenue, profit growth and cash generation as the business continued to benefit from its transformation to a wholly online operation, combined with material increases in marketing investment and our broader product offering,” Best of the Best Chief Executive William Hindmarch said in a statement.

The company switched to a ‘digital only’ model which helped improve capital efficiency following the strategic move away from capital intensive retail estate.

Outlook

Although revenues and profits surged in the last year, the CEO has announced a decline in customer engagement since the end of some lockdown restrictions in April this year.

“In contrast to the summer 2020 period, we have experienced somewhat of a reduction in customer engagement since the latest easing of lockdown restrictions on April 12, 2021, specifically relating to the understandably long-awaited re-opening of hospitality and non-essential retail,” Hindmarch said.

“We are closely monitoring this, but with our flexible model, growth strategy and plans for the year ahead, we expect customer engagement to return to normal levels before too long.”

Despite the CEO’s confidence, shares remained under pressure and at 14:27BST Best of the Best was trading lower by 24% at 2,000 pence per share.