Naked Wines boss buys 16,500 shares to prop up online wine company

Rowan Gormley, executive chairman of Naked Wines, has snapped up £7,700 worth of shares, significantly upping his stake in the firm.

Following a spending spree on company shares on 15 December, Gormley now owns a 2.93% stake in Naked Wines.

He is not the only board member to have purchased a new load of shares. Non-executive director Jack Pailing has bought a £61k stake in the company to obtain a holding of 0.91%.

It follows on from Gormley and other senior board members buying up significant numbers of shares in early November to make up for the nosediving value of the online retailer after the company announced it was reducing its revenue expectations for full-year sales to be -12% to -16%.

According to official documents, on 9 November Gormley bought £38,630.68 worth of shares in Naked Wines. The transaction took place just two days after Naked announced that CEO Nick Devlin would leave the role immediately following a further drop in revenue.

Simultaneous share purchases by CFO James Crawford and non executive director Stephen Bolton helped to fill the widening black hole, with the three leading team members collectively investing £75,000 in the company’s stock.

Gormley returned to the position of chairman in July in a bid to save the beleaguered company, and last month blamed Devlin dividing his time between the UK and US for the latest set of plummeting figures.

“My view is that this shortfall is largely to do with execution, which in turn is largely due to Nick Devlin splitting his time across both the role of CEO and US President,” said Gormley at the time.

“To resolve this situation Nick has agreed to step down as CEO and I will move to executive chairman while we recruit a replacement. Nick has agreed to help with the transition and stay on as US President through peak… He goes with our best wishes.”

On 13 November Naked Wines issued a correction regarding Gormley’s interests in the company, stating that:

“The 4 July 2023 announcement of Mr. Gormley’s appointment to the Board disclosed that he “currently owns 1.8m shares.” At that time, Mr. Gormley owned 1,891,000 Ordinary Shares and a person closely associated with him owned 140,000 Ordinary Shares, making his beneficial interest in the Company and that of persons closely associated with him 2,031,000 Ordinary Shares.”

Yesterday (18 Dec), the company confirmed in a separate statement that:

“Following the purchase of shares, Mr. Gormley’s beneficial interest in the Company and that of persons closely associated with him will be 2,175,212 Ordinary Shares, representing approximately 2.939% of the issued share capital of the Company.”

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