British greeting cards and gifts retailer Card Factory has today warned of a drop in annual profit as it expects lower store sales in the UK high street to persist over the remaining festive weeks this year, sending its shares 27% lower.
The company, which sells soft toys, gifts, Christmas cards and decorations, said weak consumer sentiment in recent months had hit spending and shopping behaviour, resulting in soft high street footfall.
“Those conditions have persisted as we moved into our most important trading period, leading to a UK store sales performance which is lower than our previous expectations,” the company said in a statement.
The UK economy shrank unexpectedly in the three months to October, official figures showed today, with retailers having a particularly bad month in October.
Card Factory forecast annual adjusted pretax profit between £55-60m – about 9% to 16.6% lower than a year earlier. It had previously expected earnings to grow by mid-to-high single digit percentage.
Shares of the company dropped nearly 27% to a three-year low.
