Link has sold the last chunk of Neil Woodford’s remaining shares in ailing mattress maker Eve Sleep for just over a penny per share.
The authorised corporate director which is overseeing the wind-down of the Woodford Equity Income fund ditched the entirety of Woodford’s 11.6% stake on 8 April, an RNS filing on Tuesday showed.
When Link sold the shares, they were worth a little over a penny.
This is down 99% from when the company floated on the London Stock Exchange in May 2017 and shares were worth 101p.
Woodford pegged Eve Sleep as market disruptor
The mattress maker first caught Woodford’s eye back in 2016, when it was an unquoted company. That September he built up positions in his Woodford Patient Capital Trust and Woodford Equity Income fund.
Paul Lamacraft, a former fund manager at Woodford’s boutique, described Eve Sleep as a disruptor to the traditional mattress market noting its “jargon-free marketing and simplified product offering” stands in “stark contrast to the legacy, branch-based sales infrastructure of the incumbent retailers,” in a blog post unveiling the new holding.
Lamacraft, who recently landed a job at Schroders which has taken over the Woodford Patient Capital mandate, pointed to Eve Sleep’s “experienced management team”, singling out chairman Paul Pindar, who was Capita’s ex-chief executive and the Purplebricks chairman, two companies also owned by Woodford.
The stock was revalued upwards just before the firm’s 2017 IPO and after completing a further funding round, which head of investment communications Mitchell Fraser Jones noted was evidence of “the strong operational progress the company has made since we first invested”.
Another portfolio flop
But good times at the mattress maker were short-lived as losses at the firm widened, requiring Woodford and Eve Sleep’s biggest backers to raise millions to keep the company afloat.
>See also: Woodford seeks takeover code waiver for mattress retailer
Investors were dealt another blow last year after a potential merger with rival mattress company Simba fell through last September, prompting Eve Sleep to issue its second profit warning in 2019.
Its shares crashed 33% to 3p off the back of the announcement, bringing more pain for Woodford who owned 31% of the company and held the stock in his then frozen flagship equity income fund.
Last week Eve Sleep announced that chief executive James Sturrock, who had a 20-month stint at the helm of the business, would be replaced by Cheryl Calverley, the company’s chief marketing officer.
Eve Sleep halved its losses to £12.5m in 2019 but revenue was 19% lower at £23.9m.
