14th Jan 2015 07:50
LONDON (Alliance News) - SuperGroup PLC, owner of the clothing brand Superdry, said it saw a "strong performance" over the peak Christmas trading period, and is comfortable with delivering a profit for the year in the region of GBP60 million to GBP65 million.
SuperGroup has had a tough few months, and went into December with a lot of excess stock following a weaker sales performance during the "extremely mild" autumn months, which it warned last month would hit its gross margins for the full year.
In a trading update Wednesday, the company said total retail sales for the 11 weeks to January 10 rose just short of 18%, while on a like-for-like basis sales grew by more than 12%, which it said was against softer comparatives than the first half.
"Whilst there are still 15 weeks of trading remaining in the current financial year, this performance underpins confidence in the group's expected profit outcome for the full year of GBP60 to GBP65 million despite the weakening euro and one of the group's important wholesale customers going into administration," the retailer said in a statement.
In the financial year to April 2014, SuperGroup reported an underlying pretax profit of GBP62 million, stripping out exceptional costs and other one-off charges.
SuperGroup said the cold weather from Boxing Day onwards helped prop up sales of its outerwear and knitwear, two clothing ranges that were hit by the warmer-than-normal autumn weather earlier in the year. It said it has seen a "consistent performance" across both menswear and womenswear.
"Although all channels and geographies have performed well, the performance of e-commerce was particularly notable in the run up to Christmas," the retailer said.
The group left its spring-summer wholesale season guidance at growth of 3.3% in constant currency.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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