Coronavirus: New Look requests three-month rent holiday

The retailer has taken other proactive steps including drastically decreasing marketing charges, pausing all creation, delaying all important Capex tasks and halting recruitment.

New Look has confirmed it is actively pursuing governing administration help including a business premiums exemption for 12 months, worker charge help, deferral of tax and countrywide insurance policies payments, and getting obtain to the Covid Company Financing Facility.

The update arrives right after Drapers exposed that New Look has set a halt on all current and potential creation, and is offering 1000’s of staff members unpaid go away in get to relieve the effects of the coronavirus outbreak.

The retailer built the decision to shut all 480 Uk outlets on 21 March, and all 28 outlets in the Republic of Eire on twenty March. This was prior to the government’s announcement that all non-essential outlets need to shut in an try to sluggish down the spread of the virus.

Main government Nigel Oddy stated: “Our complete precedence is to hold our clients and colleagues safe, which underlined our decision to briefly shut our outlets in progress of governing administration suggestions to do so. Given the unparalleled situation that we – like all shops – are running in, we have taken a selection of decisive and fast steps to enable us navigate through the coming interval.

“We are confident that a mix of these ongoing steps, the important monetary and operational development we have built in excess of the earlier two several years with our turnaround system, and the strength of our brand name necessarily mean that we will be well-positioned to return to growth when a additional normalised running environment resumes.”

New Look mentioned that it “entered the Covid-19 outbreak with strengthened liquidity”, having finished its monetary restructuring in Might 2019. It confirmed it has no in the vicinity of-phrase maturities on its long-phrase financial debt funding which matures in 2024 and “has the ability to toggle money fascination to PIK [Payment-In-Variety] to supply added financial debt servicing adaptability.”