Mothercare posts £81m six-month loss

Thursday, 17 November 2011 09:14

Mothercare, the UK retailer that sells products for mothers and babies announced a half-year loss today of £81.4 million in the six months up until October 8th.

This compares with a profit figure of £300,000 for the same period last year. Its like-for-like sales in the UK fell by seven per cent, whilst total UK sales fell by 4.3 per cent.

However, whilst the figures were worrying for its UK operations, Mothercare did post a 15.7 per cent increase in total overseas sales. The company opened 81 new stores outside of the UK in the six month period.

Overall, worldwide network sales were up 5.4 per cent from £592 million to £623.9 million.

Mothercare announced in May that it would be closing 110 stores in the UK. This prompted a re-structuring charge of £19.8 million that has helped to extend the loss in the last six months. Mothercare also put a write-down of £55 million through its books in the period reported.

Stripping out these two one-off charges from the results, the pre-tax loss would have been just £4.4 million against revenue for the six-month period of £412.9 million, up from £397.1 million in the previous year.

Alan Parker, Mothercare’s Executive Chairman said: "The Mothercare group has had a difficult first half. Whilst the International business continues to perform strongly our performance in the UK illustrates the extent of the challenges facing the business in a weak economic and consumer environment.

"We are announcing today a structural and operational review of our planned UK business size and shape."

Mothercare is also continuing with its search for a new chief executive after Ben Gordon said that he will stand down on November 17th.

Mothercare’s share price had fallen by around three per cent to 150.30 in early trading.

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