We’ve had a number of updates from Quiz in recent weeks so nobody’s under any illusion about the firm’s performance. But the company has now released its half-year results plus a December update and they underline the problems it’s been facing.

The six months to the end of September saw revenue falling from £42.3 million to £39.1 million. EBITDA was actually a loss of £0.5 million after a profit of £1.1 million a year ago. The loss before tax widened to £4.7 million from £1.5 million and the company’s cash position also worsened. A year ago it had cash of £3.6 million, but this time it reported net borrowing of £3 million.

That all looks bad enough, but we’ve also had updates recently showing that the performance after the period ended worsened.

That’s despite a phase from the start of August to the end of October where it wasn’t doing too badly. But November was a devastating month when it “experienced a marked decline in traffic both online and in-store compared to previous months and the comparable period in the prior year”. 

That meant revenues from 1 August to 30 November were down £1.5 million year on year at £24.9 million.

With the half-year results, as mentioned, the company also updated on December trading and said that “while demand in December has shown signs of improvement with online revenues broadly consistent with the prior year on a like-for-like basis, sales in-store continue to trend behind those achieved last year. 

“As a result, total revenues in December continue to fall short of management’s expectations and have not compensated for the shortfall in revenues experienced in November.”

And it added that “given the disappointing level of revenues in the important Christmas trading period, as announced on 6 December 2024, the cash headroom available to the business is less than previously anticipated. As a result, the board anticipates that additional funding will be required by the group in early 2025”.

We won’t be getting such detailed updates in future as the company is aiming to de-list from the stock exchange and to go private. It has a shareholder meeting for a vote on this scheduled for 8 January but has already received commitments covering almost all the votes it requires. The de-listing should be effective as of 23 January.