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(Alliance News) - Card Factory PLC on Tuesday reported a drop in annual profit, as like-for-like sales fell on weak consumer confidence and a decline in high street footfall in the second half of the year.
For the year to the end of January, the greeting cards retailer reported a pretax profit of GBP65.2 million, 4.4% lower from GBP68.2 million the year before.
This was despite revenue increasing by 3.6% year-on-year to GBP451.5 million from GBP436.0 million, on growth from its store network, despite a decline in online revenue.
Like-for-like sales meanwhile dropped by 0.5%, compared to a 0.1% drop the prior year.
Card Factory stores reported like-for-like sales down 0.7%, with Getting Personal, the company's personalised card offering, down 9.8% on the rising cost of customer acquisitions in an increasingly competitive, discounting-led market.
During the year, 53 new stores were opened, bringing the total UK estate to 1,022 stores at the end of the year.
Card Factory will not be paying a final dividend for the year, and does not expect to make any further payouts in its current financial year.
Turning to recent trading, the firm said online like-for-like sales have been strong since the lockdown, with sales from cardfactory.co.uk up more than fourfold and sales from gettingpersonal.co.uk up 68%.
"We delivered a reasonable sales performance in a challenging year for the high street, growing both our volume and value card market share in the mature and stable UK greeting card market. Our profitability was, however, impacted by a number of recurring cost pressures and other one off operational costs which we were not able to fully mitigate," said Chief Executive Officer Karen Hubbard.
"Since the year end, whilst we have continued to evolve our medium and longer term plans, a key focus has been on appropriately managing our business and protecting our staff through the Covid-19 crisis. We have developed flexible plans which will ensure the safety of our colleagues and customers whilst allowing a phased re-opening of our stores from the June 15 in line with Government guidelines," Hubbard added.
Shares in Card Factory were down 5.2% at 38.88 pence on Tuesday in London.
By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com
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