Matalan - comment

The company issued a very bullish outlook for the rest of the year, driven apparently by very strong trading in Q3 so far. We frankly struggle with the forecast as it would require an exceptionally strong quarter in a very weak market. However, Matalan management tends to be good at forecasting and so we’ll considerably lift our expectations for Q3, but raise them only slightly for Q4. Separately the FT reported this morning that UK retail has been picking up - albeit driven by tech and not apparel. Still, perhaps we have been to negative on the name?