UK 10:42 Wednesday, 7 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
While the brokers told you to fill your boots with shares in Made.com (MADE) after its £775 million IPO last June, I warned you again and again that this would end badly, as you can see HERE. Made featured prominently in my 2022 ShareStock presentation. This company never had one profitable year in its 12 year existence and now as it calls in the administrators, shareholders have lost everything and the recriminations begin, led by establishment knobhead Brent Hoberman who founded this crock.
Today PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has been appointed as administrators. It will try to sell the assets and if there is anything left after all costs are met then there will be a distribution to shareholders. I would not bank on that if I was a shareholder. Meanwhile the shares have been suspended and will, in due course, be delisted. It is game over.
At least historians looking back on the raft of disastrous bull market IPOs will have plenty to scrutinise. This company had a female chair and CEO and was so puffed up on ESG matters, now wonder the fund managers loved it. It is just a pity that ESG bullshit does not pay the bills. The FD was a chap who boasted he learned all about high growth companies from his time at Ocado. It is a pity that his MBA from INSEAD did not teach him that sales are vanity, cash is reality. Watch out for where Patrick Lewis pops up next and go short.
Hoberman founded Made.com and only left the board shortly before the IPO so he could dump millions of quid worth of his own shares into that IPO. He has very publicly bashed the current management for not reacting to the consumer slowdown in the right way so running out of cash. But, as you’d expect from the knobhead that is disingenuous. Made never made a profit in the eleven years before IPO, that it stumbled and crashed into macro headwinds is because its business model of selling very high priced furniture online was just a bad one. The marketing spend needed to attract customers, in an area where no player has any real USP, always devoured whatever actual operating margin was generated.
This was a duff company. Folks like Hoberman made a killing dumping their shares on dumb fund managers. Crony capitalists like JP Morgan Cazenove made more than £10 million in IPO fees and commission. Now PWC gets to tuck into the carcass for its Christmas payday. The only losers are staff, many of whom who will be getting P45s for Christmas and shareholders. Plus ca change.
As the crony capitalists led by the vile Hoberman count their winnings, perhaps they might indulge the losers frm this affair with a rendition of the ShareProphets national anthem. Over to you Brent you dickhead...
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