Victoria (#VCP) – H1 swing to even adj. loss, net debt £658.2m
- 2024-11-26 07:54:17
UK 07:55 Wednesday, 7 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Carpets roll up Victoria (VVCP) run by colourful Geoff Wilding about which I have been a perma bear has issued a trading statement. That is with the shares, once well over ten quid, now just 58p. If you cannot smell the panic at camp Victoria get yourself along to an otolaryngologist ASAP.
Shares in Victoria (VCP) were almost £12 less than four years ago. They are now just 93p, a market cap of £106 million. As a perma bear I stand vindicated but I should say that my target price remains 0p, this is still a stonking short. The list of red flags is very long and worth remembering as a read across to other stocks
I continue to believe that drowning in debt carpets roll up Victoria (VCP) has all the makings of a zero. At 157p the market cap is now sub £180million. Borrowings are more than £1.1 billion and with cash continuing to be guzzled rather than generated I cannot see how it digs itself out of such an enormous hole. Now I flag up two new matters.
The cost of borrow is high but, none the less, shorting the carpets roll up run by colourful Geoff Wilding, Victoria (VCP) has been a profitable enterprise for the past couple of years. Twice the company drowning in £1.1 billion of borrowings has insisted that the shares are too cheap, has added to its borrowings with share buybacks and then has seen the shares fall again as soon as the buyback ended. The whole exercise served only to increase borrowings.
Shares in the financial engineering carpets roll-up Victoria (VCP) were north of £5 the last time the board said that they were monstrously undervalued and started a major buyback. Wind forward to later last year and the same message came out with the shares south of £3. Now, with millions spaffed on buying “cheap” shares, they now trade at near multi-year lows below 200p.
When a roll up stops rolling up, usually because it is denied further credit, and starts shrinking it is rarely good news. This is evidently the case with controversial carpet maker Victoria (VCP), about which I written a fair bit in the past and which served up a dire trading statement on Wednesday.
Colourful Geoff Wilding, the BSD at carpets roll up/financial construct Victoria (VCP) says that there has been “a lot of noise around Victoria in the last six months.”. Yes, auditors saying accounts could not be verified, profits warnings (there is another today), debts surging. As a perma bear, publishing numerous warnings on this fine website, I won’t argue with Geoff as he coughs up yet more bad news, sugar coated with spoofery.
We have long been bearish about carpets and floorings roll up (geddit?) Victoria (VCP). But it has not always been an easy short. 8 investors have held 80% of the stock and there have been painful bear squeezes. But after recent interims the shares are at near multi year lows at 255p, a market cap of £300 million. And one can now track a descent to zero.
The bears are at last seeing vindication, shares in carpets rollup Victoria (VCP) are plunging and this is only the start of the downfall of its colourful boss Geoff Wilding. Let’s start with the rat.
On October 5th the credit rating agency Fitch was unwise enough to reaffirm the credit rating of downing in debt and red flags carpets roll up Victoria (VCP). Victoria responded by screaming about the news in an RNS. Today…
Both Lucian Miers and I have been long term bears of carpets roll up play Victoria (VCP) for a host of reasons, one of which is the “colourful” CV of head honcho Geoff Wilding. Another reason is the massive number of acquisitions some of which appear to make no sense at all. A third is its inability to generate free cash while always reporting stonking profits and a fourth, derived from that, is the debt and liability laden state of its balance sheet.
