Joules, one of the London stock market’s better regarded fashion brands, said its profits for the year to May will be significantly behind expectations after supply chain issues limited its sales over the Christmas period.
The retailer said that, following a strong performance over Black Friday, or November 29, sales in the seven weeks to January 5 fell 4.5 per cent, significantly behind expectations and way worse than the 11.7 per cent increase in the same period a year ago.
It blamed “disappointing online sales performance due to an internally generated stock availability issue”, which has now been addressed.
“The group’s other retail channels, including stores and third-party concessions . . . performed in line with expectations,” it added in a trading update released on Friday.
As well as the supply issues, changes to the group’s logistics operations will result in additional one-off costs in the short term, and Joules said it expects more cost headwinds as a result of US-China tariffs.
“We are disappointed with our inability to fully satisfy our customers’ demand through our online channel during the important Christmas sale period,” said chief executive Nick Jones. “We have identified the root cause of this one-off issue and have taken steps to prevent its reoccurrence”.
Analysts had been expecting pre-tax profit before exceptionals of around £16m, according to Capital IQ estimates.
Joules shares have fallen around 13 per cent over the past year, but prior to Friday’s warning were still comfortably above their 160p initial public offering price in 2016.
