LONDON (Alliance News) - John Lewis of Hungerford PLC said Tuesday it expects to report an annual loss as slowdown in orders and market uncertainty left the company unable to recover from a weak first half.
The kitchen, bedroom and furniture retailer explained that despite the firm continuing to "trade positively" with deposits take tracking ahead of the year prior, it has faced a "slowdown" in conversion of deposits into full orders.
"We believe this is primarily due to the prevailing market conditions impacting customer confidence, which remain affected by uncertainty due to Brexit and the retail climate generally," John Lewis explained in a statement.
Consequently, John Lewis expects sales to be GBP400,000 lower than its expectations despite forecasting them to be 10% higher in the second half of the year compared to the year prior.
As a result, John Lewis now "no longer expects to recover" much of the loss it reported in the first half of the year. The firm is, therefore, now expecting to report a loss for the year ending June.
In March, John Lewis had forecast to recover the GBP335,000 pretax loss on revenue of GBP3.7 million reported in the first half of the year during the course of the remaining six months of the year.
John Lewis added that it continues to "monitor sales closely and will provide a further update as appropriate."
Shares in John Lewis of Hungerford were untraded at 0.60 pence on Tuesday.
