With all the financial stability concerns, I took a look at Gemporia Partnership Ltd financials on the Companies House website to try and get more facts.
The 2022 accounts should have been filed in October, nothing yet so the last year available is 2021.
2021
Turn Over £89.9M Profit after Tax £10.7M Staff 525 cost £17.9M Directors 5 cost £287K
£6.1M transferred into the Employee Ownership Trust
2020
Turn Over £62.9M Profit after Tax £4.1M Staff 430 cost £10.8M Directors 4 cost £258K
£4.9M transferred into the Employee Ownership Trust
2019
Turn Over £60.3M Profit after Tax £5.8M Staff 427 cost £9.7M Directors 4 cost £199K
10.5M transferred into the Employee Ownership Trust
2018
Turn Over £57.9M Profit after Tax £7.9M Staff 360 cost £8.7M Directors 4 cost £170K
£9.7M transferred into the Employee Ownership Trust and £624K for loan payoff
2017
Turn Over £67.3M Profit after Tax £653K Staff 373 cost £10.5M Directors 4 cost £136K
2016
Turn Over £101.5M Profit after Tax £10.7M Staff 501 cost £15.5M Directors 6 cost £337K
£7.2M dividend taken
2015
Turn Over £107.1M Profit after Tax £8.3M Staff 476 cost £13.9M Directors 6 cost £155K
Basically 2021 produced the best PAT ever from a much lower turn over. Historically the business has been profitable since 2011 and generated large amounts of cash. Funding a 7.2M dividend and over 30M shifted into the EOT. Through the 2021 financial year this looks like a very solid business.
That being said there are several concerning issues. Firstly why have the 2022 accounts not been filed? Why was a loan taken out with Santander in August of 2021 That basically lists the entire business as collateral? Why was a new company created (Gemporia Holdings Limited) under the Gemporia Partnership Limited holding company last December that had all the previous company (Gemporia Limited) shares transferred into that new entity?
While it does appear there is some restructuring occurring currently, the first question based on the business financial performance through 2021 is why now? It could be sales have dropped sharply post pandemic due to the cost of living crisis. There could be other operations issues hurting the business, sadly we have no way of knowing yet and perhaps we never will know what happened.
One think we can see is the primary competition TJC has increased their turnover substantially every year since 2016 growing from £31M turnover with a PAT of 1M to £81M turnover in 2022 with a PAT of £13.3M as their latest accounts have been filed. Based on their published results they keep growing while Gemporia peaked turnover wise in 2015. That does not mean Gemporia is finished but when the competition has growing turnover and yours has peaked that is never a good sign for future business prospects as the shopping TV jewellery market is not infinite.
