• Home
  • News
  • Business
  • Mothercare H1 performance upbeat in the UK

Mothercare H1 performance upbeat in the UK

By Prachi Singh

loading...

Scroll down to read more

Mothercare, while announcing its half-year results for the 28-week period to October 10, 2015 said that underlying profit before tax was up 112 percent at 7 million pounds (10.6 million dollars). The company reported strong progress in the UK with margins up 76 bps, online sales growth of 22 percent and like-for-like sales growth of 3.8 percent with UK losses halved.

Commenting on the first half year performance, Mark Newton-Jones, Chief Executive of Mothercare, said, “We are a year into our turnaround; making good progress against each of our strategic pillars and as a result underlying profits for the first half have more than doubled,” adding, “Our work to return the UK business to profitability continues to pay off, with growth in both gross margins and like-for-like sales.”

Considerable growth reported in the UK

Total sales in UK improved 0.4 percent at 236.6 million pounds (361.3 million dollars) and like-for-like sales growth was 3.8 percent. Underlying loss narrowed to 6.1 percent compared to 13.1 percent during the same period, last year.

However, the company said that the international business remains challenging with economic and currency headwinds, but continued to grow space which was up 6.6 percent during the period under review. Total international sales stood at 376.7 million pounds (575.3 million dollars) against 397.5 million pounds (607.1 million dollars) in the first half of last fiscal year.

“We continue to lay the foundations for future growth in our international business. Despite increased economic and currency headwinds in a number of our markets, impacting both sales and profits, we and our franchise partners remain confident in the business model and together continued to grow space. We expect the challenging environment to continue into the second half,” added Newton-Jones.

MotherCare