Shares digital

Jewellery retailer Signet (SIG), which trades under the Ernest Jones and H Samuel brands, may have warned of tough trading conditions yet this hasn’t stopped boardroom share buying. Both chairman George Williamson and chief executive Terry Burman, have invested around £100,000 in the company’s shares, while non-executive director John Walls made a small investment, buying 10,000 shares.

In the trading update the Anglo-American jeweller confirmed that profits would be from $330 million to $340 million, down on the £214 million chalked up last year. This downturn, worse than brokers’ feared, was due to a rapidly deteriorating market in the US where the group enjoys the bulk of its sales. Over Christmas, underlying sales there fell 8.1%, compared with a 3.1% decline in the UK.

The market believes that profits will fall further to £143 million in 2007/8, implying EPS of 5.2p, and placing the shares, at 64p, on a PE of just over

Shares says: Short term outlook is poor and there’s no reason to expect a recovery for the shares anytime soon.