Trading Statement

FRENCH CONNECTION GROUP PLC

Trading update

16 January 2013

French Connection Group PLC ("the Group") is providing a trading update on completion of the Christmas period.

Following a good start to the Autumn/Winter season, sales in our UK/Europe retail business softened a little in the run up to Christmas. Despite this, and with the benefit of tightly controlled inventory, we decided to delay the start of our sale period by one week, as part of our process to build brand equity. As a result, UK/Europe retail like-for-like sales in the 24 weeks to 12 January 2013 showed a decline of 2.9%, of which 1.9% was in relation to moving the sale date.

We were able to implement a similar delay in sale start date in North America where there has also been some disruption from extreme weather in the period. Overall, the trading in North America was broadly in-line with our expectations.

In both UK/Europe and North America, January is an important shipping period for our wholesale businesses as we begin distribution of the new Spring/Summer product. Subject to trading for the rest of this month, we expect that the Group will report a loss before tax and exceptional items for the year ending 31 January 2013 in the region of £7.5 to £8.0 million. We expect that the Group will close the year with net cash in the region of £25 million. 

The announcement of the financial results for the Group for the year ending 31 January 2013 will be on 13 March 2013 at which time we will provide an update on our improvement initiatives and the outlook for the new financial year.

Enquiries:

Roy Naismith / Neil Williams French Connection +44(0)20 7036 7000

Tom Buchanan / Charlie Simon Maitland +44(0)20 7379 5151