Superdry reports challenging festive trading as half-year sales slide
Published: 07:23 26 Jan 2024 GMT
Superdry PLC (LSE:SDRY) warned market conditions are unlikely to improve in the short term as it reported a fall in sales and widened losses for the first half.
Julian Dunkerton, founder and chief executive officer, said: “This has clearly been a difficult period for Superdry.”
“A challenging consumer retail market, set against a backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty and some remarkably unseasonal weather conditions have all combined to weaken the financial performance of the group.”
The branded retailer said Christmas trading “proved challenging” due to the milder weather and heavy discounting, and “we expect full-year results to reflect the more challenging environment seen to-date”.
In the 12 weeks to 20 January, revenue fell 13.7%, with wholesale sales down 38%.
The news came as Superdry released half-year results which showed sales in the 26 weeks to 28 October 2023 fell 23.5% to £219.8 million from £287.2 million the year before.
Adjusted pretax loss widened to £25.3 million from £13.6 million, with an adjusted loss per share of 26.5p compared to 11.2p before.
The challenging consumer retail market, unseasonal weather, as well as the underperformance of the Wholesale segment was blamed for the sales shortfall.
Retail sales fell 13.1%, Wholesale sales plunged 41.1% and Ecommerce sales dipped 19.1%.
The retailer expects to deliver £40 million of cost savings this financial year, ahead of the initial target of £35 million.
Net debt fell to £28.9 million from £38.0 million.
