Crawshaw warns over full-year profits

The loss before tax came in at £400,000 compared to a loss of £100,000 the year before as it continues to incur additional central costs to support its store opening plan, with like-for-like sale down 4.4% following a 1% increase in 2015. Still, group turnover increased 29% to £21.5m.

The company proposed no interim dividend, versus 0.10p per share the year before.

Chief executive officer Noel Collett said: “We have made considerable progress with our store expansion program over the last 18 months but are very disappointed by the recent like-for-like sales performance as some of the price and range initiatives didn't resonate with customers as we had expected.

“We are acting quickly to restore sales momentum by returning our focus to the local value-led proposition that has proved successful in the past. We have already re-introduced a locally driven, value-led promotion strategy which is bringing more customers in store, although these activities require short term margin investment and will therefore impact full year profit expectations.”

Crawshaw said it has largely completed the first phase of its rollout programme, with the delivery of nine new trading stores across the period. One new store was opened in the second half, bringing the total to 49 trading stores as at 29 September.

In addition, the group said its new standalone factory outlet store was performing much better than expected.

At 1213 BST, the shares were down 2.5% to 34.62p.