CAKE

Patisserie Rescue Bid and Closing Accounts

It looks like Luke Johnson’s reputation will not be totally trashed after all after he announced a way for the company to be rescued today. It is proposed to do a placing at a heavily discounted share price of 50p (last price before suspension was 429p). This will raise £15 million from the issue of 30 million shares. The current shares in issue are 104 million so that implies substantial dilution although I have seen worse. It will take some time to ...
14th October 2018 Read more

CAKE (Patisserie), Foresight 4 VCT AGM, Payment Companies and Dunelm

More bad news from Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) today – well at least you can’t say the directors are not keeping you informed about their dire situation which is not always the case in such circumstances. Yesterday the company announced that its major operating company had received a winding-up petition from HMRC, of which the directors had only recently become aware. Today the company said after further investigation the board has reached the conclusion that without an “immediate injection of capital, the Directors ...
14th October 2018 Read more

Black Hole in Patisserie Holdings, Audit Reviews, Telford Homes and Brexit

Let’s take the really bad news first. AIM listed Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) shares have been suspended following an announcement of “potentially fraudulent accounting irregularities” which will significantly impact the company’s cash position. The CFO, Chris Marsh, has been suspended. Media reports suggest there may be shortfall of as much as £20 million. The auditors are Grant Thornton which won’t improve their reputation much but as the company’s year end is September they may not yet have looked at last year’s results. According ...
10th October 2018 Read more

Revenue Recognition, Patisserie Valerie, Utilitywise and Cryptocurrencies

Revenue recognition is a hot topic at present as folks have come to realise that this is a frequent cause of company accounts misrepresenting the true state of the business. Quindell and Blancco are two examples and I cover Utilitywise below. But first let me report on the Annual General Meeting of Patisserie Valerie (TIDM:CAKE) which I attended this morning (as a shareholder of course). The company operates a chain of cake+coffee shops under the company name but they also have several ...
31st January 2018 Read more