22nd Oct 2013 08:28
LONDON (Alliance News) - Bespoke kitchens and furniture maker John Lewis of Hungerford PLC Tuesday said it expects to report a small underlying operating profit for its last financial year after it continued to trade strongly in the second half of the year, while orders in the current year are also looking strong.
The company, which has just launched a new bedroom range that is says is so far trading as well as it had hoped, said it made revenues of about GBP6.5 million in the year to end-August, while orders and dispatched sales in the first quarter of the new year are up 13% at GBP1.7 million.
"This growth is encouraging and validates the steps we have taken in recent years to strengthen our business," the company said in a statement. "However, as the experience of 2011 shows caution must be applied in extrapolating current trading patterns given the speed with which changes in consumer confidence impacts on high cost discretionary expenditure business such as ours."
The company was hit hard by the economic crisis and related downturn in home improvements, but is now showing signs of a turnaround. It had reported a pretax loss of GBP88,000 in its 2012 financial year as sales declined 9.6% to GBP5.6 million. Like-for-like sales were up 24.7% in the first half of the 2013 financial year while it swung to an operating profit of GBP35,000 compared with a GBP224,000 loss a year earlier.
John Lewis of Hungerford shares were trading up 42.6% at 1.64 pence Tuesday morning, by far the biggest increase on AIM.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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