ASOS have dropped quite significantly in the past week for no particular reason and I view this as the perfect opportunity to invest as I can see them bouncing right back up to the 5.50p mark in the next 2-3 weeks. STRONG BUY!!

Monday in a year or three - I assume you mean transco!

Monday man...... its waiting to fall like everything else - only the results holding it up!

The celeb-alike fashion site that's grabbing the 'Heat' generation

500 new items and three million hits a month and the share price is soaring: Judi Bevan checks out ASOS

Sunday, 29 June 2008


Independent.co.uk Web


Imagine all the fashion shops of Oxford Street available at a click of your mouse and you have some idea of ASOS, the only listed British retailer right now where sales are growing at 80 per cent a year.


On the website you can find more than 8,000 outfits and accessories, many of them remarkably similar to those worn recently by Sienna, Kate, Victoria and friends. You can even see pictures of your favourite celebrities wearing the original, or watch a video clip of a model twirling in the outfit of your choice.

If you don't have the right belt, bag or bangle to go with that new dress, don't worry; a choice of accessories will pop up alongside the garment. Do you need a pair of sunglasses for summer? Just upload your photograph and click, click, click to see how the latest designer shades will look on you. Thank you, broadband.

You had better be quick, though, because 500 new items are added each month and when they are gone, they are gone or WIGIG, as they say in the retail trade. As the managements of Zara, H&M Hennes and Topshop know, creating the impression of scarcity is a wonderful way to keep that stock turning over fast, and that cash-flow flowing.

When ASOS announces full-year figures tomorrow, it will provide some welcome news in a depressing retail firmament. Analysts expect profits before tax of at least 7m more than double last year's 3m on turnover of 80m (up from 43m). They also expect the website's founder and chief executive, Nick Robertson, the great-grandson of Austin Reed, who gave us the quintessentially English menswear brand, to make bullish noises about future expansion plans. The company will shortly open a new warehouse that should see it through the next five years, and Robertson wants to increase the range on offer. "We hope to double the number of brands within 18 months," he explains.

Robertson is also in discussions with Sir Philip Green, owner of the Arcadia group, about selling Topshop clothes in the same way he already sells Karen Millen, Kookai and French Connection. Topshop has its own online operation running alongside its retail stores, but if the right deal were to be struck, it could make sense for both sides.

Even without it, ASOS is the second most popular online clothing site to Next, with 4.6 per cent of the market, and some analysts are forecasting it will be number one within months.

Robertson started his career in the advertising industry with Young & Rubicam in 1987, but by 1995 he had co-founded Entertainment Marketing, which specialised in product placement around celebrities. Five years later that morphed into ASOS, which was launched on AIM, the London market for growing companies, at the height of the dot-com boom that quickly became the dot-com crash. The company struggled with capacity restraints and technical problems until 2004, when it made its first profit.

Since then, the site has grown to attract three million visits a month. Even the Buncefield oil refinery explosion at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, which damaged ASOS's warehouse and closed the website over Christmas 2005, failed to set it back.

Typical ASOS customers are young working women who read Heat and Grazia, like to party and do not yet have mortgages. More than half of women in the UK between the ages of 16 to 24 now buy clothes online more than once a month. And with 55 per cent of all households having broadband, that figure is likely to rise, especially as Robertson has attracted an impressive management team from "bricks and mortar" retailers such as M&S, Topshop and Selfridges.

In the past year ASOS shares have risen dramatically to 324p, outperforming the retail sector, admittedly a pretty mixed bag, by 300 per cent. It is reasonable to expect the shares to mark time at some stage but the stellar performance has attracted the attention of the investment bank Cazenove, which recently produced a 30-page circular describing the speed of growth as "staggering" and is forecasting a further jump in profits to 12m for 2009.

To those who criticise ASOS's blatant exploitation of Britain's celebrity culture, Robertson has a robust reply: "All we are doing is showing clothes in the context of celebrities, which is what magazines have been doing for decades."

High-street shops are left out in the cold

Online retailing may be the growth story of the moment but it is still relatively tiny compared with the industry as a whole. The specialist research company Verdict estimates that UK online sales will hit 15.2bn in 2008 up from 6.4bn in 2004; but that is still only 5 per cent of the entire retail market.

By comparison, though, last week proved dismal for traditional "bricks and mortar" retailing, with research showing consumer confidence at new lows. And although spending on food and in "feelgood" areas such as entertainment and clothing remains resilient, people are staying clear of "big ticket" fridges, TVs and furniture.

Profits at the electrical retailer DSG International fell from 295m to 205.3m due to what chief executive John Browett called the "challenging environment". Profits at the group's UK computing division mainly PC World halved. A restructuring of its troubled Italian arm resulted in a one-off impairment charge of 390m.

At Kesa Electricals, which owns Comet in the UK and Darty in France, chief executive Jean-No Labroue said there had been a clear slowdown in growth in the past six weeks.

Meanwhile Debenhams, or Debtenhams as it is now known due to its heavily geared balance sheet, rushed out a statement showing better sales than feared. It was to no avail, and investors continued to shun the stock. Although British Retail Consortium figures for May showed sales growth of 1.9 per cent, analysts believe this was mainly due to much better weather than last May. The British retail climate is expected to carry on cooling

ASOS FY underlying pretax profit up 176 percent
AFX


LONDON (Thomson Financial) - ASOS Plc, the AIM-listed internet fashion retailer, reported Monday a 176 percent increase in full-year underlying pretax profit and buoyant current trading, bucking the deepening gloom in the UK retail sector.

For the year to March 31 2008, the group, formerly known as As Seen on Screen, made a record underlying pretax profit of 8.2 million pounds, up from 3.0 million pounds last time, on revenue up 90 percent to 81.0 million pounds.

Pretax profit was 7.3 million pounds, up 117 percent and above analyst forecasts of about 7.0 million pounds. Earnings per share rose 99 percent to 6.6 pence.

The retailer has also made an impressive start to its new financial year, with sales for the 13 weeks to June 27 up 95 percent.

As of June 27, ASOS.com had 1.65 million registered users.

The website targets internet savvy 18 to 34 year olds looking to emulate the designer looks of celebrities, such as Kate Moss, Paris Hilton and Victoria Beckham, but at a fraction of the price.

ASOS.com offers over 10,900 fashion products across womenswear, menswear, footwear, accessories, jewellery and beauty.

Shares in ASOS, 14 percent of which are owned by chief executive Nick Robertson, closed Friday at 327 pence, valuing the business at 237 million pounds.

james.davey@thomsonreuters.com

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2008/07/asos_com_growth_and_demographics.html

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So the roses may not last all summer!

Peaked and on it`s way downhill now by the look of the chart maybe.

Views of a chart expert please?

1 year and 6 month charts below.
trend is still very healthy, but even in a strong market, nothing continues upwards in an unbroken line.

new clothes, even for women(!), are not a necessity of life, so with incomes being badly squeezed and sentiment continuing to fall, it is no surprise to see the high street shops being badly hit.

ASOS has escaped the pain so far, firstly because is seems to fill a particular niche very well indeed, and also does not have the frightening o'heads of high street rentals.

nevertheless, if spending is being reduced, it is hard to see ASOS being totally immune, and thus a reflection in sp which, of course, is looking forward +/-6 months.

i don't think "today" is a time to be buying anything (except perhaps kevlar vest stocks!), but if i were a holder, i would be pretty sanguine and only be concerned if sp dropped with any impetus through 25/50 dma levels.

Thanks for the chart but sentiment plays a huge part imo.

of course .... read my comment!

This is a great stock but taken my money out. It is largely immune because of the teenage/twenties market it appeals to (ie no mortgage or cares and will continue to spend on throw away fashion). So the fundamentals are great but if we're now in a bear market at this 306p 50 day resistance has gone then, look out 200dma, as cynic mentions above and "could" be a good short if only for a correction after a superb run higher since Buncefield. Also if Philip Green doesn't buy it, he may replicate it and that might cause a squeeze.

Once it breaks below 300p and ends there for the day we could see the real pressure begin.

au contraire ma chere cloche - the SP bounced off both the lower trend line and the psychological 300p level today.

The drop across the entire retail sector is in the range 5-15%. The growth in the much smaller on-line sector is 50-75%. So ASC can continue to do very well (even beating overall market shifts) whilst the wider retail market suffers. It's not just the footloose and fancy free teens - the shift in 45-55 yr old market towards on-line is also significant as it is across all other age ranges than can actually use a computer.

Did our ears deceive us? At the panel discussion What makes a successful site, were sure we heard Asoss chief Nick Robertson say it would be easy for his business to trade in France within 18 months using the same stock as its UK website. Whether or not this is something he is seriously considering remains to be seen.
taken from this weeks e-business newsletter.

Held very well off support yesterday. Shall just watch (general) market for a bit before coming back in..

greyhound agree 3 looks good support for now.

note that bounce was exactly off 50 dma - see above

cheers cynic it dipped below the 50dma & 3 interday for about an hour yesterday.

Also a good sign that when the s/p dips it ALWAYS bounces back and latest low always higher than previous low

But won't always.