Carpetright meeting threadbare expectations

Carpetright says that trading for the year to date is in line with management's expectations and its view for the year remains unchanged.

In a trading update for the 12 weeks ended October 13th it announced that like-for-like sales in the UK increased by 0.6%, although total sales in the UK declined by 0.6% due to the reduction in the number of stores year on year.

In the rest of Europe (Netherlands, Belgium and the Republic of Ireland), total sales declined by 12.2%.

Darren Shapland, Chief Executive, said: "Gross margin for the period continued to improve in line with our previously announced expectations and our guidance of a full year gross margin improvement in the range of 200-250 basis points above the prior year, remains unchanged. The majority of this margin improvement will be realised in the first half, as we annualise the margin improvement measures implemented in the second half of last year."

The group will report its interim results for the first half of its financial year on December 11th.

Consensus forecasts for the full year ending 30 April 2013 are for pre-tax profits of £9.34m (2012: £13.50m) on turnover of £466.80m (2012:£471.50).

CM