Key facts

Leading specialist retailer in the large and robust UK greetings card market: with the value of the singles card market growing and card sending “ingrained” in the UK culture (c. 30 cards sent per adult per annum in the UK)

Approximately one third of our sales are from gift dressings, small gifts and party products, a market estimated to be worth £1-2bn

Operate from over 700 stores across the UK: c50+ stores a year opened over the past 10 years

16 years of unbroken revenue growth: sales of £327m in year to 31 January 2014

Value retailer, with high quality products at affordable prices: majority of cards sold for less than £1

c.6,500 employees in the UK (plus up to 6,000 additional seasonal staff)

Over £2.8m raised for Macmillan Cancer Support

Headquartered in Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Company Website

Financial Calendar

Recent Broker notes

BarChart Indicators

Recent Market news

Card factory's Fundamentals (CARD)

Trading Statement Thursday 26th

StockMarketWire.com

Card Factory expects full-year underlying pre-tax profits will be slightly ahead of market consensus after a good Christmas trading period and against a strong comparative.

The group said this was driven by a combination of like-for-like sales growth and new store roll out.

Year-to-date like-for-like store sales growth improved to 0.4% (11 months ended 31 December 2015: +2.8%).

Against a strong prior year comparative, Card Factory stores delivered a good Christmas trading performance with cumulative like-for-likes for the fourth quarter of the financial year returning to the historic range of 1% to 3%.

A trading update said: "cardfactory.co.uk, ourtransactional site, continues to grow from a low base.

"Including sales from cardfactory.co.uk, total Card Factory year-to-date like-for-like sales grew by 0.5% (11 months ended 31 December 2015: +3.0%)."

Card Factory said the board was confident of delivering full year underlying profit before tax for the current financial year slightly ahead of analyst consensus.

What was the big drop in September for?

CARD FACTORY PLC (CARD.LN) declared a 15-pence-a-share special dividend, despite reporting a 14% fall in pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2018, citing high cash generation.

Shares down 55.8 pence, or 15.72%, at 299.20 pence.

I suspect the highlighted bits below:

StockMarketWire.com
Card Factory saw strong revenue growth in the first half and has declared a special dividend while investing for the future.

Revenues for the six months to the end of July rose by 6.1% to £179.6m - up 6.7% on an equivalent number of trading days - with like-for-like sales up 3.1%.

Underlying EBITDA fell by 4% to £32.8m and operating profits were down 13.9% at £24.6m.

The group declared an interim dividend of 2.9p per share - up 3.6% - and special dividend of 15p per share, return of £51.2m to shareholders.

Chief executive Karen Hubbard said: 'We have delivered a solid set of interim results with strong growth in like-for-like sales and total revenue, despite the decline in footfall seen across the high street; however, profitability over the half year was impacted by foreign exchange, national living wage and some of the important investments we are making in the business for longer term growth.

'Our business model remains highly cash generative and we are pleased to be announcing another special dividend of 15 pence per share.

'Together with the interim dividend, this means we will have returned £246.5m to shareholders since IPO in May 2014.

Thanks chaps, seems reasonable.

Woodford over 5% http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=5705067

Looking positive Stan - Q3 Trading Statement sometime mid November.

Are you sure Skinny about that, the last TS was in August.

Only going by the last 2 years - see - "Financial Calendar" link in the header.

xd is 9 November

Indeed 2R2 paying over 5% as well.

Added more on the dip.

what looks cheap today could easily be cheaper tomorrow
i confess i have never been a fan of this stock for all sorts of reasons (see #7), though i know goldfinger (3i or whatever) certainly used to be

I don't deal in "could" Alf...just get ya money on.

not likely - per above

Your loss sun beam 😂

Trading update. http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=5743907

Doing nicely!

Yes back on the up after the usual ex-divi dip.