N Brown confident despite slide in sales

N Brown Group left its full-year guidance unchanged on Thursday, despite seeing a slide in first-quarter sales.

The AIM-listed online clothes retailer - which owns Simply Be, Jacamo and JD Williams - said group revenues fell 9.9% in the 13 weeks to 3 June to £148.7m.

Within that, product revenue fell 11.9% to £93.6m, while financial services posted a 6.3% decline to £55.1m.

The retailer said trading had been affected by poor weather in early spring as well as weak consumer confidence.

However, it also saw an improving product revenue trend across the quarter, and expectations for the full-year were left unchanged.

Steve Johnson, chief executive, said: "We have started the year with an elevated focus on the transformational priorities, which will deliver the biggest benefits, including new mobile-first websites for Jacamo and JD Williams, and the delivery of our new financial services platform.

"As flagged in our 2023 results [published earlier in June], we expect weak consumer confidence to continue through the 2024 full year and are therefore taking a disciplined approach to managing costs and driving margin improvements while we invest in the business for medium-term growth.

"We remain confident in the strategy, and expect to continue to deliver progress across each of our strategic pillars this year."

N Brown is forecasting 2024 current pre-tax profit of £9.8m and earnings per share of 1.6p.

Shore Capital, which acts as broker to N Brown, said: "The update contains no surprises, but does confirm subdued product sales - with an improving trend - and financial services still in contraction.

"Much heavy lifting has been undertaken in N Brown’s transformation, but much work also needs to be done."

As at 1000 BST, shares in N Brown were down 1% at 24.1p