29th May 2008 15:30
29 May 2008
Flying Brands Limited ('Flying Brands' or the 'Group')
Trading Update
Flying Brands, the Jersey-based home shopping group, is today providing an update on its trading performance since its last announcement on 23 April 2008.
Group trading has been affected by a significant recent deterioration in the bad debts and returns suffered by the Greetings Direct business. The Directors believe that the likely full year impact of the higher levels of bad debts, returns and cancellations for Greetings Direct is to reduce the internal expectation for full year 2008 profits by £1.1m. This deterioration in performance is being suffered both in the UK and Australia.
We are on schedule to launch Greetings Direct in the USA in June and whilst the results in both the UK and Australia have been worse than expected, we still believe that the launch in the USA will be successful for the Group in the long term. We have, however, reviewed our internal forecasts for the USA in the light of recent experience in the UK and Australia. The impact of the aforementioned adverse trading results and the revision to our internal forecasts will result also in a significant impairment in the carrying value of the goodwill attributable to Greetings Direct.
Trading in the other brands overall is currently marginally below expectations and we have thought it prudent to revise downwards our internal expectations of the full year 2008 profits of these brands by £0.2m.
For further information, please contact:
Flying Brands Limited 0844 884 6498
Tim Trotter, Non-Executive Chairman
Graham Norton, Finance Director
Smithfield Consultants 020 7360 4900
John Kiely
George Hudson
Notes to editors
Jersey based Flying Brands Limited (LSE: FBDU) is a multi brand home shopping
group. Founded in 1981, it was admitted to the Official List of the London Stock
Exchange in 1993. The Group operates the following divisions:
* Gifts (Flying Flowers, the UK's largest flowers by post brand,
despatching nearly one million bouquets a year; Greetings Direct, the UK's
only continuity greeting cards business)
* Garden (Gardening Direct, one of the UK's largest mail order bedding
plants and gardening products operations; Garden Bird Supplies, a leading
provider of food and accessories for birds and other wildlife; Sarah Raven's
Kitchen and Garden for hard to find plants and household accessories)
* Entertainment (Listen2Books, the leading mail order audio books, DVD and
video publisher and distributor; Benham, the first day cover stamps and
coins collectables specialist; Silverminds Direct, the nostalgic music
business)
More information can be found at: www.flyingbrands.com
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