Cettire (ASX:CTT) shares spiked upwards right out the gate on Friday on the same day the company has reported $191M revenue in its Q3 FY24 update.
Not long after, the company dipped into the red. Near 11.30am on Friday the company was down -1.65% to $3.29/sh.
Clearly, the market isn’t sure what to think – that’s probably due to the fact Cettire shares were recently wiped out after a widely reported investigation was published suggesting the company was failing to pay customs taxes properly.
Further reports alleged Cettire had been hit with a please explain by customs regulators in Texas. The company has been solid in its conviction that it’s not doing anything wrong.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no mention of the customs issue in the company’s update on Friday.
That investigation into Cettire had been a crowdsourced one.
Users took to the internet to query how, exactly, Cettire can sell luxury fashion items so cheap – its main appeal, and, the factor that has long made Cettire something of an enigma.
Consider that the company reported margins greater than 20% in its update on Friday on earnings before costs of $6M. Active customers have reportedly increased 84% QoQ, too.
Cettire founder Dean Mintz also has an unfortunate habit: he likes to sell off large packages of shares at the most unfortunate times, which doesn’t help anything either.
The man – once elusive – has been more public-facing in recent history, which helped Cettire return to a share price above the $4.00/sh mark after tumbling through the COVID years.
That tumble was largely spurred by a Mintz sell-off, and Australian Financial Review has long been suspicious of the company.
And yet, it has returned to a market cap over $1B.
That could be set to continue as the company reported on Friday it will expand into China in Q4FY24.
However, with Chinese inflation reading only 0.1% on Thursday – dangerously close to returning to deflation – it’s not clear how much tailwind that will bring Cettire.
CTT shares last traded at $3.29.