Naked Wine Regulatory News (WINE)

Majestic Wine PLC

Trading Statement

Majestic Wine PLC ("Majestic" or the "Company") the UK's largest wine specialist, today announces a trading update.

On 16 June 2014 the Company will announce its results for the year ending 31 March 2014 and the Board now expects to report that profit before tax will be broadly in line with the previous financial year.

Although the 10 week Christmas trading period was satisfactory and we achieved like for like sales growth of 2.8%, we have experienced challenging trading conditions since the start of the 2014 calendar year. With two weeks to go until our year end we now expect like for like sales to be flat for the financial year as a whole. The latest market data published by Nielsen indicates that we have maintained our market share at 4.1%.

Furthermore, as part of our longer term growth strategy to increase the store footprint to over 300 and expand our e-commerce operations, the Board has decided to invest in the necessary infrastructure enhancements to underpin our future growth plans. These include new office space, a larger and more efficient distribution facility to handle higher volumes, establishing our own in-house e-commerce development team and increasing the size of our Commercial sales team. Building on our strong customer service ethos we are also increasing our investment in both staff training and in our CRM and data analytics capabilities. These investments are necessary to ensure that we can drive further growth although the costs in the short term mean that the Board now anticipates a flatter profit growth profile in the 2015 financial year.

Steve Lewis, Chief Executive, said:

"The Majestic proposition remains compelling to the consumer and our future growth prospects remain bright. I am confident that the investments we are making over the course of the next twelve months will drive future shareholder value."

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