Maggie Hyde's Company futures

Planetary prescription for Boots


A bleak future for Boots has been predicted by brokers CSFB. It faces increasing supermarket competition and its share price has halved in 18 months. For an astrological prognosis, we can return to its public incorporation (11 November 1888). Boots was born under the medical sign of Scorpio, with health and hygiene Virgo rising, and the scorpion's power to turn the tables should not be underestimated.

The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction falls on the company's Taurus Midheaven at the end of May, marking its current crisis. The coming year remains tough with non-core business, including its photographic services, having to be curtailed. Redundancies are possible next Easter. To find its long-term strategy, Boots needs to reclaim the progressive vision of its founding family. John Boot, an agricultural labourer, learnt herbalism from his mother and his first shop in 1849 provided consultations and remedies for the poor. His son Jesse created the company and established the winning formula of qualified pharmacists employed in a general store.

Boots is in a unique position to bridge the gap between mainstream medicine and 'new age' healing. Over the next two years, self-help Uranus provides opportunities to combine innovation with its trusted reputation and its scientific Saturn. Evolving its projected health clubs into mainstream and complementary treatment clinics would fit perfectly with John Boot's vision. E-commerce Uranus also suggests on-line health-lines. If Boots can swallow the New Age pill, after autumn 2001 it will gallop along the road to recovery.

This week in Business


Monday

Bank Holiday

Tuesday

FINALS: Incepta Group, Newport Holdings, Providence Resources

INTERIM: Hercules

ECONOMICS: UK CIPS April manufacturing survey, BBA March stg mortgage lending, provisional April M0, Nationwide house survey

Wednesday

ECONOMICS: UK CIPS April construction survey, end-April official reserves, DMO to auction 2.5 2020 index-linked gilts, CBI April distributive trades survey, BOE MPC meeting

Thursday

FINALS: Luminar, Prowting, Scottish Power

INTERIMS: Shell

ECONOMICS: March final M4, BoE MPC rate decision

Friday

INTERIMS: Fibernet

ECONOMICS: BRC quarterly economic survey

Watch out for: Lastminute.com


All eyes will be on Lastminute.com, which reports its first set of interim results on Thursday. The online store, which takes a commission on everything it sells, including restaurant places and holidays, has seen its share price slide horribly since it floated in March, leading to accusations that it is overhyped and fundamentally over-valued.

Having lost half its value in little more than two months, co-founders Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox know these results are crucial. The company has said it doesn't aim to make a profit for some time so analysts will look for evidence that Lastminute is continuing to grow its customer base. When its prospectus was published, the company had 1.1 million subscribers; 5 per cent had bought something from Lastminute. Up until the end of last year it had been growing its subscriber base at a rate of 33 per cent a month. These figures will need to have shown growth, otherwise a further collapse in share price looks inevitable. Expect details on how the website is going to be overhauled, and future services personalised.

Trading Floor


Buy...


No! Sell! No Buy! ....No Sell! A difficult week for Morrison & Co, Cheshire Estate agents. They are crying in their G&Ts at the collapse of Ruud Van Kneedestroyed's £19 million transfer to Manchester United. As it would have surely brought a price surge in the Cheshire 'soccer merchandising and transfer-broker belt', with its Dutch-style very flat geography, rubbery tasteless cheese and ghastly ersatz country-cottage suburban sprawl. He could, for example, have bought approximately 4,000 terraced houses in Stockport and then knocked them together using a huge number of RSJs. Alternatively he could have gone for the more standard contemporary footballer's gaff of purpose-built detached doubled-fronted modern 'Dun Bunging' Las Vegas-brothel-cum-mock-Tudor mansion tricked out in the local architectural style using local building materials (chalk, compacted silage) boasting multiple garage space to park a dozen or so Mazaratis, connecting quarters for live-in servants, contract lawyers and Hello! journalists.

But though the possibility of Ruud has vanished with his ligaments, the news on Friday night of Manchester City's promotion to the Prem has brightened the outlook for estate agents peddling gaudy mansions to spotty youths. The pay rises afforded to the light blues - plus a couple of high tariff transfers - will more than make up for the lost soldier of Wounded Knee. Open the electronic gates and let them in....

... Sell


Armitage Shanks - the country's biggest supplier of 'sanitaryware' (ie toilets and urinals). A perfectly good, even excellent, company in many ways. But this week a leading firm of expert lavatory outfitters, as well as several trendy PR companies, predicted that the urinal could be on its way out as a result of a move towards unisex public and office toilets. The excitement began when it was revealed that a new office block near the Bank of England in the City had been provided with toilets catering for both sexes, apparently following the example of the American television series Ally McBeal. Female workers in the office block affected are already moaning that they no longer feel comfortable 'having a good gossip' in the single-sex sanctuary of the toilet cubicle. Men, meanwhile, are reportedly 'shocked' by the experience of seeing women marching into the toilet in front of them. But a spokesman for Nexus, the company which created the new toilet told the papers: 'We hope the toilets will become part of the next generation of offices and we expect other companies to follow our lead.' If so, this could spell curtains for Armitage which has been providing bowls and urinals for single sex toilets since 1817.