Here's to a miserable Easter
AS freezing Arctic blasts sweep across the country, one killjoy of a company chairman is already wishing us all a wet and miserable Easter and Whitsun.
Iain Muspratt chairs Home Entertainment Corporation, owner of the Choices DVD and video stores and choicesdirect website, and he is quite frank about how much he likes bad weather.
Last summer - the best since 1976 - cost his company around £1.6m in lost sales and about £800,000 in profits as fewer people rented a movie.
No wonder, then, that Muspratt said today: 'We would benefit from the weather in our favour - i.e. rain - during the critical trading weeks around Easter and Whitsun.' In hard numbers, Choices can expect to rent out an extra 150,000 movies each wet bank holiday weekend over a dry one. For Muspratt that means an extra £250,000 straight through to the bottom line.
So the first 20 weeks, which were bone dry, of the 28 weeks to 13 December cost the company dear, with turnover up 6% at £70.4m but pre-tax profits down 15% at £3.3m. The interim dividend rises 5% to 2.2p. Muspratt is not all gloom, however.
'There's a fabulous release schedule ahead,' he said, 'so even if you do have to look out of the window at the drizzle you can have great fun indoors.'
Oh, and by the way, he forgot to wish us all a wet May bank holiday.
