CPR25 Oct 2011 08:52
Lord Harris of Peckham, Chairman and Chief Executive, said:
"As I have said previously, like many other retailers we expect the challenging trading environment across Europe will continue for the rest of our financial year. This view is reflected in the update announced today.
"In the UK, like-for-like sales performance has been volatile, with sales volumes closely linked to periods when there has been a higher level of promotional discount. This factor, alongside an increasing proportion of beds in the sales mix, will dilute the gross margin by around 400 basis points in the first half compared to the prior year, with a corresponding impact on first half profitability. To partially offset this, we continue to take a determined approach to reducing our cost base and expect this to be down by approximately £4m.
In this fragile market, we remain focused on self-help measures. We have continued to rationalise the UK store base and have been successful in transferring sales to nearby stores as part of this activity. Based on our experience in the first half, we are adapting our ranges and promotional activity to continue to offer the best prices to our customers whilst simultaneously working with our suppliers to reduce the level of margin investment. Following the appointment of a new senior management team in July 2011, we have further developed and expanded our beds business, which now represents approximately 6.0% of revenue. The new team will launch a significantly improved beds range in the third quarter of our current financial year and accelerated growth from the beds business will be an important area in the delivery of our sales and margin targets for the second half. The roll-out of our new laminate offering is progressing and we continue to develop our website to help drive store footfall. These factors are expected to combine to limit the impact on gross margin to around 300 basis points for the full year.
"The actions we have taken in our Rest of Europe operations are delivering an improvement in profitability despite a decline in sales.
"As a consequence of all of these factors, we expect underlying pre-tax profits for the full year to be towards the lower end of the current range of expectations.
"Looking forward, I see no respite from the challenging environment over the next year but remain confident the Group will emerge in a strong position to deliver future growth once consumer demand improves."