Carpetright profits hit by Dutch woes
The Carpetright chain has issued a profits warning after a fall in sales in Europe the last quarter.
Carpetright, which has stores in Cannock, Kidderminster, Merry Hill, Oldbury, Walsall and Wolverhampton, saw total UK sales rise by 0.6% in the 13 weeks to January 25.
But sales in the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland were down by 7.5%.
It expects full year underlying pre-tax profit to now be below the lower end of current market expectations.
Executive chairman Lord Harris said: "Tough trading conditions persisted in the UK in the third quarter of our financial year but our self-help measures have enabled us to grow sales within a difficult market."
He added that UK profit was in line with group expectations and was expected to be ahead of last year for the year as a whole.
"Trading in our Rest of Europe business continues to be dominated by the extremely difficult economic conditions in the Netherlands. As a result we now expect this business unit to be loss making for this financial year, although we still expect it to remain cash generative.
"In view of the market conditions, predicting the final outcome for the year with any accuracy is difficult and the result for the year will depend on our performance in the final quarter," added Lord Harris.
The group was 457 stores and 16 concessions in the UK and 142 stores in Europe.
