Results round-up

Specialist menswear retailer Moss Bros posted a rise in full year profit and sounded an upbeat note on current trading.

In its preliminary results for the 52 weeks to 30 January, Moss Bros said underlying pre-tax profit rose 23.1% from the previous year to £5.9m.

Like-for-like sales including VAT increased 8.2% to £119m, while like-for-like hire sales, which represent 14% of sales, were up 11.7%.

LFL sales for the first nine weeks of the new financial year were up 5.2% with growth across in-store retail, e-commerce and hire.

Chief executive officer Brian Brick said: “We continue to make strong progress in the delivery of our strategic priorities. The modernisation of the store portfolio, which is nearing completion, is achieving the anticipated returns and we have well developed plans for the implementation of our multi-channel shopping environment.

“We have added to the strength of the management team and we are well placed to take advantage of these opportunities to accelerate our growth.”

He added that the early response to the 2016 Spring/Summer retail range has been positive and retail LFL sales and gross margins are continuing to improve year on year.

Full year pre-tax profits at greeting card maker Card Factory almost doubled to £83.7m driven by strong sales and new store openings.

Revenues were up 8% to £381.6m, with sales at the Getting Personal online unit up 7.5%.

Underlying earnings per share rose 17.2% to 19.1p and shareholders will be rewarded with a final dividend of 6p a share, up from 4.5p.

In November, the company returned £51m to shareholders via 15p-a-share special dividend.

“We believe that there is significant potential for further returns of surplus cash to shareholders in line with our stated policy,” Card Factory said.

It added that it had started initiatives to provide “partial mitigation of margin headwinds”, in particular foreign exchange and the new UK National Living Wage which came into force last week.

The company said the 2016 results were boosted by like-for-like sales growth in existing stores and improvements in quality and range of both card and non-card products.