DFS has reported a decline in both profits and sales and warned that the developing coronavirus outbreak has made it impossible to give accurate guidance on its full-year results.
The sofas giant posted a 17.5m fall in underlying profit before tax to £20.5m and a 5.7% downturn in revenue to £488m.
The retailer said the downturn in group revenue was “as expected” given strong comparatives and pointed out that over a two-year period including Sofology revenue for the group was up 2.6%.
DFS reported that gross sales fell 5.8% to £629.7m and that net debt remained broadly flat.
The retailer said its online channel continued to grow, with sales up 4.5% to £117m, with wider group sales up to £222m for the 52 weeks to December 29, 2019.
Of more concern was the developing coronavirus situation, which the retailer said was causing “uncertainty” and made it impossible to give any guidance to full-year results.
“Given the uncertainty as to how the current Covid-19 situation will develop it is not possible to give guidance with any certainty for the full-year turnout,” said boss Tim Stacey.
“At present we believe our supply chain position will normalise before the financial year end, and it is only in very recent days that we have observed any change in consumer footfall to our showrooms.”
He did warn that “any disruption” over Easter and May Bank Holidays would “likely impact our financial year 2020 results”.
No comments yet