LONDON, Nov 11 (Reuters) - British fashion retailer New Look posted a rise in first-half sales and profits onTuesday but stayed cautious on its full-year outlook, saying thewarm autumn weather had made the market trickier.
The privately owned chain, which competes with Primark and Next, saw sales rise 4.7 percent to 788.6million pounds ($1.25 billion) in the six months to Sept. 27,helping pretax profit jump 89 percent to 26.1 million pounds.
Those results included contributions from Mim, the Frenchbusiness sold to Hong Kong based Main Asia in September.Excluding Mim, pretax profit rose 30.7 percent to 28.1 million.
UK sales at New Look stores open over a year rose 8 percentin the period, the firm said, adding it had maintained its grossmargin in spite of warm weather keeping many of its warmerwinter wares on shop shelves.
The unusual autumn temperatures have already forced Next andSuperGroup to cut profit guidance for the year, withanalysts expecting the conditions to force many firms intofierce promotional battles.
"Despite some improvement in consumer confidence, marketconditions remain uncertain and the unseasonably warm weather inSeptember continued through October. As a result, we remaincautious about the outlook for the remainder of the year," thecompany said.
New Look has some 600 stores in the UK and Ireland andtrades from another 200 across Europe, China, North Africa, theMiddle East and Asia. (1 US dollar = 0.6312 British pound) (Reporting by Neil Maidment, Editing by Paul Sandle)