Things No Brighter For HMV

A change of chief exec has done nothing for the fortunes of troubled British retailer HMV, as posting another dismal trading update has wiped a further 8 percent off the company’s share price.

“These numbers reflect the challenging markets in which we operate,” said new chief Trevor Moore, who took over from Simon Fox at the beginning of August.

 
This time the problem for HMV is summer sales falling due to a lack of new releases, although a couple of weeks ago Kim Bayley from the UK’s Entertainment Retailers Association said that “cramming” so many records into the last quarter is causing problems for the shops and their customers. 
 
 An HMV interim report says like-for-like sales fell by 11.6 percent in the 20 weeks ending Sept. 15.  
 
Even as its share in the market has increased, there is a significant decline in market value, taking the total group sales decline to 14.8 percent, which includes the impact from stores that have been shut down. 
 
HMV shares have fallen almost 95 percent in the past two years and slumped nearly 9 percent to 2.78p in London Sept. 21.
 
Moore did point out that the year-on-year decline was less marked toward the end of the period and the company should be helped in the remainder of the year by a strong pipeline of new releases in the music, DVD and games markets ahead of Christmas.
 
Moore’s only reference to the firm’s live music business, following its £32 million sale of the Hammersmith Apollo to a partnership between AEG and German ticket giant CTS Eventim, was that it’s still looking for buyers for other parts of the venue and festival portfolio.
 
The £32 million from the Apollo sale enabled HMV to amend the terms of its existing £220 million loans.
 
The upside is that sales of MP3 players and tablets continued to grow strongly, as its stores undergo refits in order to embrace a wider entertainment market.