Stuart Rose has nurtured cash and carry chain Booker through a rough transition period and come up smelling sweet. At this time last year, the company was in serious trouble but, after 18 months of his careful nurturing, the end of the financial year in March should show good organic growth in the company. Rose has done such a good job that City rumours say he is ripe for plucking by one of the major high street retailing chains. The company made a £76.1m profit in the 52 weeks to December 27, 1997. But in the 65 weeks to March 27 last year it barely broke into the black, recording a £3.6m pretax profit. That was before a £150.4m restructuring charge was taken into account. But the share price has rallied from a low of 46p on February 8 last year to 156p on January 24 this year, a new 12 month high. In the past few months, Booker has gone back on the offensive, snapping up C&C firm Double J and Trademarket from Alldays. It plans to revamp its Happy Shopper own brand products and its Chefs Larder foodservice brand. Analyst Clive Black from CCF Charterhouse said the company had done the simple things well. "Rose faced a huge task when he took over the running of the company. It had a huge debt problem and was very fragmented. It has made some very sensible disposals and the next couple of years should be very exciting, especially with its venture into e-commerce," he said. {{NEWS }}

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