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N Brown blames warm weather for revenue decline in FY15

By Prachi Singh

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Business |REPORT

For the full year ended February 28, 2015, N Brown said that its total continuing group revenue declined 0.1 percent to 818 million pounds (1,352 million dollars). Within this, revenue from the sale of goods increased by 1.1 percent but revenue from services declined by 2.9 percent. Despite the company is being positive about the relaunch of JD Williams, the poor weather in September 2014 impacted sales performance, accounting for half of the year-on-year decline in revenue of this brand. Simply Be was also impacted by the unseasonal trading conditions. Jacamo performed strongly with sales up 11 percent.

In line with its strategy of focusing both efforts and marketing spend on the company’s power brands, revenue from support brands declined by 4.4 percent and accounted for 28.7 percent of total continuing revenue, down 130bps versus last year. Specialist brands performed strongly in the year, with revenue rising 12.6 percent. This was driven by a strong result from House of Bath. Adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations were 20.49p and statutory earnings per share from continuing operations were 21.23p.

Commenting on the performance, Angela Spindler, Chief Executive, said, “This last year was an important one for our company. We are comprehensively modernising the business in terms of organisation, capability, infrastructure and processes to adopt a digital-first mindset and to ensure that we are fit for the future of retail. We are improving our product proposition and competitive position by investing in quality and price.”

The company’s performance in the USA was pleasing, with product demand growth of 13 percent. It reduced the operating loss significantly, from 4.7 million pounds (7.2 million dollars) to 2.5 million pounds (3.8 million dollars). Till the launch of its new international web platform in mid-2016, the company will remain in cautious expansion mode in the USA.

The company operates 15 stores, of which 14 are dual-fascia. This includes five stores that opened during FY14/15, together with the Exeter store which opened in March 2015. Exeter is our best performing new store to date. Now it plans to open a total of 25 stores.

N Brown