Mike Ashley confounds investors with 17-word presentation

When Mike Ashley tried to impress Sports Direct’s shareholders during a meeting at the London Stock Exchange on Thursday, he came armed with PowerPoint slides and a presentation. It ran to just 17 words.

“It’s clear we have smashed the ball out of the park with our Selfridges of sport concept,” the billionaire founder and chief executive of the retail chain told investors, after urging them to note down everything he said.

Then there was silence.

People who were there disagreed about how the applause started. One said it was a spontaneous and light-hearted relief of tension. Another wondered whether Mr Ashley had been the first to clap himself.

“I’m not sure it was an optional activity,” one of the people said. “It wasn’t a joke [that] people laughed at. That’s all he wanted to say.”

Mr Ashley, who later spent an hour answering wide-ranging questions from investors, had arrived with bad news and bold plans. Sports Direct’s pre-tax profits plunged by 59 per cent in the year to April, even as the company embarked on a debt-fuelled property buying spree aimed at ending any association with dingy stores on shabby UK high streets.

He named Jon Kempster, a former executive at logistics group, Wincanton, as a permanent chief financial officer — filling a role that had been vacant since 2013.

Sports Direct spent £317m on freehold property last year. The chain plans to open bigger shops in smarter neighbourhoods, part of a plan to improve relations with fashion brands and become a more aspirational retailer.

This could yield a multimillion-pound payday for 28-year-old Michael Murray, who is in a relationship with Mr Ashley’s daughter, Anna, and runs the Sports Direct property team.

Mr Murray met Sports Direct’s shareholders on Thursday and delivered a presentation that was well-received, according to people who were present. From next year he will be in line to receive up to 25 per cent of any “value added” by his work.

The figure will be determined using an unspecified formula at the “absolute discretion” of Sports Direct’s non-executive directors, including Keith Hellawell, its chairman and a former West Yorkshire chief constable.

The retailer blamed falling profits in the year to April on a slide in the value of sterling, which increases the cost of imported goods.

Last year, it admitted to losing £15m in an abortive attempt to hedge against the falling value of sterling.

Since April it has faced a 40 per cent increase in the cost of supplying dollar-denominated goods to hundreds of European stores after the expiry of a hedging contract that had shielded the company from the weakening euro.