Likewise Group plc (LON:LIKE) Chief Executive Officer Tony Brewer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss a record performance in November, what’s driving continued growth and sales, plans for 2024 and three reasons why investors should follow the stock.
Q1: First off Tony, you must be delighted that Likewise Group delivered a record sales revenue performance in November, could you tell us more about that?
A1: Absolutely, it’s what the business has been building up to as we’ve established greater market presence in the UK flooring industry.
We have an excellent management team at operational level, and they’ve built around d them sales teams with a lot of customer experience and knowledge and relationship. We’ve been building up our point of sale and really November’s culminating in that.
I think the other really pleasing aspect, and as we go into December, we are also seeing a significant increase in volume that the business is able to handle from a logistics perspective. Again, it’s something we’ve said, we’ve invested heavily in the logistics and the distribution and logistics centres around the UK which we now have 11 sites, and those logistic centres have been able to handle the volume that the sales teams have generated.
I think that gives us a lot of confidence going into 2024 that we can deliver those volumes.
Q2: What is it that you put your continued growth and sales down to?
A2: Again, it comes back to those management teams and the sales representatives around them.
We’ve continued to invest further, we’ve just appointed a Commercial Manager in Manchester for the A&A business, developed further commercial sales within that sector.
We invested in three people in South Wales, a general management, commercial management, and sales representative, that’s in the Likewise business. Furthermore, appoint somebody for Bristol to develop out of the South and in London and Southeast, again additional sales representation and increasing the sales management to develop those businesses.
In Valley, which we keep as a separate business from a sales and marketing and logistics perspective, again, we’ve invested in South Wales during the course of this year, and with the success of that, we’re now developing into Bristol and the Southwest.
Q3: Just thinking about investment, do you have plans for 2024?
A3: I guess the key feature is that Scotland is becoming more and more operational and contributing towards our logistics network. Also, we’re about to re-house A&A into new premises, local to their existing site in Manchester and of course, we invested in cutting capacity for Valley in Derby to enable them to increase their business into next year.
Q4: Tony, if you could give me three reasons why investors should follow your stock, and be excited about the future, what would they be?
A4: I think it’s absolutely again, the management and sales teams that we’ve built up over the last 3-4 years, and the logistics expertise and the ability to handle those increasing sales volumes and look to get improving returns on sales as we get some operational gearing into the business.
