YM Group: accounts delay is due to backlog

YM: CEO says group's only issue is growing its packaging capacity
YM: CEO says group's only issue is growing its packaging capacity

YM Group’s chief executive is blaming a backlog at Companies House for the group’s accounts being more than a month overdue.

The £117.6m turnover business was due to file its accounts for the financial year ending 31 May 2020 by the end of May 2021, having used the filing extension granted to all businesses because of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The accounts have been flagged as overdue at Companies House since early last month. 

YM Group CEO Stephen Goodman told Printweek the accounts have now been submitted.

“They have been filed in late June – Companies House has a back log,” he stated. 

Filings made online at Companies House usually appear within 24 hours. If the accounts were filed on paper it can take up to a week to process and sometimes longer at peak times.

The late filing has caused the business issues, with suppliers and customers questioning YM’s financial position. 

An industry source commented: “People are very spooked that they haven’t put their accounts in.”

Goodman said there was “not a problem” at the company, and said the group’s only issue was “growing the capacity fast enough for our packaging products”.

YM’s Lettershop business has developed a paper-based alternative to the polythene bags typically used by e-commerce retailers in industries such as fashion. 

The recyclable padded or extra-strong envelope – the TLG ECOMLR  – has been put together in partnership with adhesive technology specialist Henkel and uses Henkel’s patented Epix barrier protection technology. 

YM is also understood to be among the suppliers pitching for the Associated Newspapers supplements deal

When YM filed its accounts for the 2018/19 financial year pre-tax losses had ballooned to £6.7m, but at the time the group said that in the first six months of trading in financial year 2019/20 it had made “good progress with its three-year business plan”, with adjusted EBITDA (excluding exceptional items and non-recurring costs) greater than the entire prior year at £5.3m.

The 2019/20 accounts for YM Group’s subsidiary companies YM Chantry, Pindar Scarborough, Lettershop, York Mailing and Go Direct Marketing are also flagged as overdue at Companies House.

YM has been backed by US-headquartered investor Pricoa since the Goodman-led MBO at York Mailing in the autumn of 2015. 

The business sits just outside the Top 20 in in the Printweek Top 500 survey.