Sales fall at Beales

Beale PLC, the specialist department store operator annonuced this morning that gross sales for the 52 weeks to 29 October 2005 , including the full value of concession sales and VAT, were 1.5% lower than the pr evious year. Like for like sales for the last 20 weeks of the financial year were 0.6% below those of the pr evious year.

The company said "We expect the trading environment during the all-important Christmas period to be extremely competitive and any increased pr omotional activity is likely to adversely affect margins. However, we are confident that we now have the right team in place to meet the challenges of what we believe will continue to be a difficult trading environment in 2006 and the Board's attention will remain focused on the further enhancement of the pr oduct mix, control of costs and the im pr ovement of sales and margins.