Frasers Group CFO Chris Wootton has issued a letter to Accent Group chairman Lawrence Myers, calling for him to resign from his position following the recent FY26 results.
Accent Group is the managing company behind the likes of The Athlete’s Foot, Hoka, Platypus, Hype DC and Frasers’ Sports Direct subsidiary. Some of these are owned entities, while others are run under license or contract.
Wootton’s letter comes nearly three months after Frasers launched a takeover bid of Accent Group, with an offer price of $0.65 per share. The company has since extended the takeover bid through to the end of September.
Since launching, it appears none of Accent Group’s shareholders have budged on the offer, with Accent’s share price hovering above 70 cents per share since the offer was tabled.
Wootton’s letter to Myers declared that the chairman’s role has become “untenable”.
“In my view, your staggering “head in the sand” approach to capital allocation and the company's recent underwhelming FY26 results has proven beyond doubt that your position as chairman cannot rightly continue.
“You continue to ask shareholders to place their faith in the Board-approved 2030 Strategic Growth Plan, which your own management team provided little conviction over in last week’s earnings call. Accent and its shareholders deserve better.”
“In my opinion, you have failed to steer the company through its recent difficulties; failed to take decisive action to address a staggering fall in the company’s share price; and failed to engage with your biggest shareholder in any meaningful way.”
The four-page letter comments heavily on the FY26 results, the company’s share price drop over the last year, and criticises Accent’s 2030 strategy. Across the board, many fashion-related ASX companies have seen falls in share prices over the last year, with many reporting struggling sales in 2026 amid the US-Iran war.
Lawrence took the chair role of Accent Group in November 2025. According to Wootton’s letter, Lawrence has presided over two earnings downgrades and a share price drop of 30 per cent.
“The company itself previously signalled risk associated with the treatment of goodwill, and in FY26 that risk has now crystallised, with Accent recognising a $48.6 million non-cash impairment of its own goodwill, which shareholders should find alarming.
“Under your stewardship, Accent has been pushed into difficult financial straits leaving the significant shareholder dissatisfaction indicated at last year's AGM utterly disregarded.”
Ragtrader has reached out to Accent Group for comment.
In Accent’s FY26 audited trading update, Accent Group reported a 69.1 per cent drop in its statutory earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to $34 million, driven down by the non-cash impairment charge, losses from closed businesses, restructuring costs and advisor costs related to the takeover bid by Frasers Group.
The goodwill impairment is a non-cash item and has no impact on the company's operating cash flows, dividend capacity, banking covenants or liquidity position.
“Notwithstanding this decision, the company continues to have a clear future growth plan and the impairment does not in any way reflect the board’s confidence in the strategic growth initiatives of the company, as laid out in the 2030 Strategic Growth Plan,” Accent Group shared in its annual report.
Ragtrader spoke with Accent CEO Daniel Agostinelli and the company’s CFO Matthew Durbin last week on the results, with the pair citing better trading momentum in early FY27, following a blip since March earlier this year.
“We were trading pretty well through till March last year, and then as the geopolitical conflict started to ramp up and oil prices ramped up, we actually saw an immediate effect in April, and that continued into May and June,” Durbin said.
“However, I'm going to say the last six or seven weeks have felt a bit better, and we started to see a little bit of momentum. It's a bit of a mixed bag, but certainly there's been some momentum that started to build in the last seven weeks or so.”
Agostinelli added that the main pain points are leasing costs on the bottom line and starkly low consumer sentiment on the top line.
“The unemployment rate is now four and a half per cent across the country. We employ 9,000 people. We're having to make decisions that we don't want to make either. But you simply need to in order to keep the cost measures in play with what's going on out there, and it just seems that sentiment is down.”
Accent Group operates over 850 stores, now including four Sports Direct stores already opened. Five more Sports Direct stores are set to be opened by the end of 2026, with 30 expected to be operating here by 2028.