ANALYST VIEWS: HAS THE PROFIT WARNING AFFECTED YOUR OUTLOOK?
JOHN STEVENSON | PEEL HUNT
Retail sales were in line with forecasts and little changed from the Christmas interim management statement, with wholesale on track for second half expectations. Given the relative unimportance of January trading and weak fourth quarter comparatives ahead, we were therefore surprised management took the opportunity to cut profit-before-tax guidance to the bottom of the £50m-54.5m range.
WAYNE BROWN | COLLINS STEWART
The trading update is disappointing across all areas…We reduce our profit-before-tax forecast from £51m to £49m. Supergroup remains committed to opening 20 UK stores and 50 international stores per annum. With any high growth business, execution risk is high and whilst the business should have resolved its distribution issues, it is now suffering from an unprecedented level of discounting across the UK high street.
FREDDIE GEORGE | SEYMOUR PIERCE
Following this update, we are reducing our full year 2012 pre-tax profit forecasts from £54m to £52m, which puts our forecast broadly in line with consensus, taking earnings per share down from 50.9p to 49.2p to reflect a more conservative view of wholesaling revenues. As a consequence, we expect total sales to be lower than our forecast by around £10m to £327m. We, however, still expect a robust fourth quarter against relatively easy comparatives.