A few weeks ago I enjoyed myself at the first Stockopedia StockSlam of the year. Once again we managed to deliver an excellent line-up of presenters all happy to stand-up in front of a packed out audience. It's always a surprise, to me, finding out which companies are going to be presented but it's usually a happy surprise. Generally there's a good mix of names that I'm familiar with along with some that I've never heard about before but may end up becoming of interest. It's a lot like running a screen on Stockopedia but with an added human touch!
Stop press: I'm pleased to say that the next StockSlam will take place next week! If you'd like to present, which I thoroughly recommend, please follow the instructions here: https://www.stockopedia.com/content/stockslam-3rd-april-registration-is-open-454393/
Cake Box (CBOX)
Recent listing floated in June last year at 108p - hit current share price within two weeks and has stayed roughly at this level ever since
A specialist retailer who does fresh cream cakes but not just any old cakes - they are egg free
Company started in 2008 and has grown up to 91 franchise stores
Aim is to go from 91 stores to 250 - opening roughly two a month they’ve got a fairly long runway ahead of them
At half year results they did 4.35p EPS while current forecast for the year is 8.1p so perhaps that is something of an underestimate?
They’ve opened 12-15 stores in the first half and they’re due a similar number in the second half. If you've got 100 stores, and you are opening something like 20 a year, that’s a pretty material increase in stores and should generate a lot more in sales
Online sales are up 86% in the first half and they are opening a new warehouse facility in the north, so that will obviously give them better coverage in the rest of the country
Online customer reviews are very mixed. You either have people saying 5 stars, fantastic cakes, not had better or essentially one star, it was stale, it was like a brick, it was inedible
Employee reviews are also mixed and some say that it isn’t a great place to work. They seem to be minimum wage people, or even the people being brought in on unpaid internships, and they are being made to decorate cakes 14 hours a day and they don’t really like it that much
They only…
