Looking through recent articles, there are many companies at the moment posting “bad” trading results for the fiscal year, with plenty of negative news. An example. As reported by theregister, Dixons online sales only made them £900,000 this year as opposed to  £11.3m a year ago. That’s a big drop, for sure. But that’s 900 grand profit. after paying for their warehouses, staff and operating costs, they’ve made nearly a million in extra cash. In the uk, Dixon’s operating profit was “flat” and provided “little cheer” at only £71.3m profit. I’m sorry, what?? In an environment where individuals are losing their jobs leaving them with yearly losses of thousands, and many companies folding and shutting up shop totally, surely £71.3m profit is still perfectly respectable. Let’s face it dixons, now is hardly the time to be splashing the cash anyway. You are doing well.

Comet on the other hand, well, what can we say? Comet “posted losses of £8.9m for the year” “compared to profits of £11.5m a year earlier”. So somewhere along the line, you managed to change the companie’s fortunes to the tune of around £20m?? Did you not notice? I’d have started making up a plan. Surely these companies would have higher share prices if they announced their losses and said “We lost money, there were fewer customers, we’ve gotten rid of something that wasn’t doing so well, we hope everything will be fine next year”. Instead these results always seem like nobody noticed that all the customers had stopped buying anything, like suddenly at the end of the year it’s a big surprise that things haven’t gone well.

Dixons needs to stop thinking things are as bad as they say. Comet needs to notice things are as bad as they are.