Then there is laser treatment, which is top dollar and therefore likely to have been hit harder than mostsegments. You would do well to get a look at the growth charts that Moulsdale and his lieutenants would have used to tantalise bank managers in the run-up to optical express ruined mylife crash. Almost certainly the reality has been rather different, however. This explains why OE was left with only one major UK competitor recently when Optimax bought long-suffering Ultralase.
Betting heavily on laser may well have exacerbated the Cumbernauld company's fixed costs, ensuring that it only needed to lose a few percentage points in turnover to suddenly have a crisis on its hands. In 2011, the most recent year for which figures are optical express ruined mylife, for example, a £16.5m drop in turnover led to a £10.4m drop in underlying operating profits. Whatever expenses OE has, in other words, most of them were there regardless of what it sells.
At the same time, the business has clearly been under heavy pressure from the bank to get its balance sheet in order. In 2011, net debt was still about 3.4 times top-line earnings, somewhat optical express ruined mylife
the circa 2.5 times that is seen as acceptable these days.
Hence when former PWC Scotland boss Frank Blin was appointed to the board last summer, there was speculation that he was installed to do the bank's bidding (which is almost certainly correct). This debt problem presumably also explains OE's announcement last autumn that it had put a subsidiary into administration, closing 40 stores and then buying back the remaining 40 - a move that supposedly eased the problem of high fixed costs.
This ailing subsidiary, which was responsible for almost half of turnover, made a top-line loss of about £5m in 2011. Without it, the remaining business would have been much more profitable. The fact that it was not put out of its misery until after optical express ruined mylife might be a sign that Moulsdale was resisting swinging the axe. Turnover is vanity but profit is sanity, as they say.
This move came parcelled up with a debt restructuring agreement with RBS that appeared to relate to the whole of OE. Here comes the mystery I mentioned at the start. On the back of this agreement, OE finance director Stewart Mein was quoted in a rare interview with The Herald, talking about plans to invest £1m in laser eye clinics and open 40 new consultation centres in the UK and Ireland. He said: "We are optical express ruined mylife in a strong position to build the business going forward."
Yet just 10 months later, RBS allegedly refused Moulsdale an emergency loan to pay staff. It appears he was told he could either arrange for the debt to be bought out or the bank would push his company into administration. Moulsdale, who is estimated to be worth £60m, bought the debt at a substantial discount and came up with a package for capital investment, saving some 1600 jobs
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