The Ashes is now two tests into the series and it's looking like business as usual for Cricket Australia, beating England fairly comfortably.
Every time The England team come to Australia there are high hopes that they may be able to challenge. However, England don't normally pull it together for one reason or another. High hopes make it even more disappointing when they don't remotely come close.
Here are three shares that had big hopes just like the England Cricket team and failed to deliver:
Yowie Group Ltd (ASX: YOW)
The chocolate and publishing company had big aspirations to grow in the USA and become as synonymous with toys in chocolates as Kinder Surprise. A year after launching in the USA the share price rose up to $1.25. Today it languishes at $0.20 per share.
So far, Yowie has been a classic example of big aspirations not coming to fruition
QBE Insurance Group Ltd (ASX: QBE)
QBE was (and still is) one of the ASX's most global companies with operations in Australia, America, Europe and Asia Pacific. However, it seems that the business was more focused on size rather than the quality of its overseas businesses which have helped drag the share price from almost $35 pre-GFC to today's $10.66.
It's beginning to show signs of recovery but I'm not sure it will ever get back to a share price above $25 considering it may offload more of its overseas operations.
Vocus Group Limited (ASX: VOC)
Vocus once had the aspirational goal of reaching a share price of $20 by 2020. That goal has been firmly shelved and now the business is having to offload its New Zealand business to shore up the balance sheet. Going from over $9 to under $3 in less than a year and a half isn't a great record.
Management may be able to turn it around but it will have to produce a few good results in a row for the market to trust that the business is over its acquisition indigestion.
Foolish takeaway
I think the English Cricket team have a better chance of winning the series than Yowie or QBE do of reaching their previous all-time highs. There is a chance that Vocus could get back there with the right moves because demand for technology and data is only going to get larger from here.
