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Birmingham Post
Birmingham Post
Business
Jon Robinson

musicMagpie bosses double down on their investment in bid to demonstrate 'confidence and excitement' amid 'volatility'

Top bosses at musicMagpie have doubled down on their investment in the business in a bid to demonstrate their "confidence and excitement" in the firm amid "volatility" in the market.

Chief executive and co-founder Steve Oliver, along with his wife Catherine, has sunk about £250,000 into the company to snap up almost 480,000 additional shares.

The move comes after the Stockport-headquartered firm's share price has fallen from 162.5p since March 1 to 52.5p after a further 16% drop today (Tuesday, March 22).

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Before the purchase, the Olivers together held more than ten million shares, a 9.5% stake in the company.

Documents filed with the London Stock Exchange also confirmed that chief operating officer Ian Storey had purchased a further 95,238 ordinary shares for about £50,000.

Mr Storey first joined the company in March 2015 as chief financial officer before taking on his current role in April 2021.

He previously worked for Ultimate Products and Deloitte.

After the business announced its full-year results on March 2, its share price suffered a 50% drop.

BusinessLive understands that the company's institutional firms, such as Canaccord Genuity Wealth Group, Liontrust Asset Management and Schroder Investment Management, are not among the investors to have sold shares recently and continue to back the firm.

Speaking to BusinessLive, Mr Oliver said: "There has been this volatility and this sensitivity around in the market but to demonstrate our long-term confidence in the model, and we're not sitting here thinking anything has changed, both myself and Ian have purchased more shares.

"We are demonstrating now our believe and faith in the business as well as our confidence and our excitement.

"We have made a strong signal of our intentions but the world is a volatile and sensitive place at the moment.

"Our peer group has experienced similar pressures on their share price and there it a lot of talk of consumer pressure."

Earlier this month, the firm said it had battled a squeeze on its margins during its first quarter of its new financial year and warned the market that it could fall short of its targets.

musicMagpie, which floated on the London Stock Exchange's AIM last year, posted a pre-tax loss of £14.8m for its 12 months to November 30, 2021, down from a profit of £6.9m in the prior year.

At the time, the business said the loss was due to £25.7m of costs associated with equity-settled share-based payments of £17.4m, depreciation on disposal of property, plant and equipment of £1.8m, provision for impairment of rental assets of £400,000, amortisation of intangible assets of £1.5m as well as £4.6m of IPO and other non-underlying items.

musicMagpie added that of the costs, £22m are non-reoccurring.

On an adjusted basis, the company's pre-tax profits went from £9.2m to £7.9m.

The business also posted a turnover of £145.5m, a decrease from £153.3m.

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