Published
Nov 8, 2016
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Revenue slips at New Look amid ‘extremely challenging’ market

Published
Nov 8, 2016

New Look said revenue for the first half of financial year 2017 declined 5% to £718.1m as external factors such as falling consumer confidence affected sales.


Photo: New Look


Like-for-like sales fell 8.8% in the UK, resulting in an 8.4% drop in group like-for-like sales. Despite the challenging trading conditions, the British retailer’s website experienced a 9.5% increase in sales, while revenue from third party ecommerce sales jumped 21.5% in the period.

Adjusted EBITDA was down 28.6% to £86.9m, from £121.7m in the prior year’s period, while underlying operating profit fell 37.4% to £59.3m.

The company reported a loss before tax of £0.9m, up from £53.7m in the first half of 2016 when the figure included non-recurring exceptional costs linked to the Brait acquisition and bond refinancing.

Despite these results, New Look said it remains confident in the long term strategy.

“Recent macro events highlight the importance of our international strategy and the need for an agile and diversified proposition which keeps pace with the ever-faster speed of trends driven by social media. We will soon reach the milestone of 100 stores in China and we continue to focus on our multichannel approach in our key priority international markets of China, France, Poland and Germany. Furthermore, we remain encouraged by the positive reaction to our standalone Menswear offer reaching 15 standalone stores, and we are excited about the potential for our Beauty range,” said Anders Kristiansen, CEO.

The fashion company expects third quarter sales to boost its full year revenue. Marketing efforts have been expanded across key markets and a Christmas-themed window scheme has been launched in stores to promote this growth.

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