N Brown Group issues profit warning amid falling revenues

The owner of plus size clothing brands Simply Be and Jacamo, the N Brown Group, has issued a profit warning amid falling revenues.

The group has revealed it now expects full-year profits to come in lower than previous expectations of £78-£84.1m at around £70m-£72m.

In the 18 weeks to 4 January, N Brown revealed total revenue dropped by 5% after it said its trading was impacted by a “highly promotional market”.

As a result product revenue decreased 4% compared with the previous year with financial services revenue also falling by 4.6%. Despite a fall in product revenue, N Brown said that womenswear and menswear both experienced lower single-digit growth thanks in part to a 13% increase in digital revenue at Simply Be.

CEO Steve Johnson said: “This has been an encouraging period of peak trading for the business in a highly promotional market, as we delivered digital revenue growth across both womenswear and menswear with particularly strong digital growth from Simply Be and Ambrose Wilson as customers responded well to our ranges.

“Financial Services revenue was down, reflective of our strategic approach to the retail business and continued tightening of our lending criteria. We are making good progress with our ongoing strategic review and look forward to providing further details at our full year results in April.”

He added: Our work so far has highlighted the need to have a tighter brand portfolio, a sharper focus on product and a cost base appropriate for delivering sustainable digital growth.

“At the same time, we will continue to proactively address the accelerating and cumulative external factors which are anticipated to reduce the size of our financial services business over the next two years.”