Bonmarche shares collapse as it warns investors of £6m loss
Bonmarche’s share price crashed by as much as 30 per cent this morning as it issued a fresh profit warning, telling investors to expect a full year loss of up to £6m.
Read more: Christmas sales slump at Bonmarché
The chain had guided to up to a £4m loss, but now expects to lose between £5m and £6m, blaming “significantly weaker” trading since the start of March.
Investors sold out of the embattled chain store, leaving shares to collapse 28 per cent before later recovering to stand 16 per cent down at 31p – just a quarter of its July 2018 value of 122.5p.
Warmer weather earlier than expected this year meant previous sales gains made since Christmas have now been reversed.
“We believe that the recent downturn in trading is a consequence of the demand for transitional ranges, between winter and spring, having been satisfied during January and February,” it said.
“Although sales of spring season stock benefited from the spell of warm weather in late February, this is not yet a large enough part of the sales mix to compensate for the lower demand for transitional stock.”
It is Bonmarche’s third profit warning since late September, when it told investors to expect £5.5m in underlying profits, down £8m from the year before.
That guidance dropped to see it predict it landing somewhere between breaking even and a £4m loss in December, before today’s revelation sent shares crashing.
Read more: Bonmarche shares crash after it slashes profits
However, Bonmarche left its full-year 2020 guidance unchanged based on the “positive early reaction” to its spring product.