London, England, March 28, 2007--Topps Tiles PLC., the UK's largest tile and wood flooring specialist, said it expects its first-half pretax profit to be about 18.3 mln stg against 20.3 mln a year ago.
The company said it expects operating profit for the 26 week period to March 31, 2007 to be about 21.0 mln stg compared with 19.5 mln in 2006.
Overall group revenue is expected to be in the region of 101.8 mln stg, up 14.9 pct from last year, despite a continuing tough retail market, while like-for-like sales are anticipated to be up 4.4 pct.
Topps Tiles added its current period overall revenue reflects, for the first time, the revenue from its Dutch stores, following the acquisition of its joint venture business in October.
The company said it expects revenue from the UK to show an overall growth of 11.4 pct, with like-for-like revenue up 4.0 pct. Like-for-like sales was down 4.0 pct in the 2006 period.
Holland is expected to show overall revenue growth of over 36.0 pct and like-for-like growth up 19.0 pct, against increases of 21.6 pct and 8.6 pct respectively in 2006, Topps Tiles said.
The group said it has a new store opening target of a net 30 new UK stores and a net 5 new Dutch stores for the full financial period.
It has, to date, opened a net 15 stores in the UK and a net 4 stores in Holland in the first half, to give a total of 286 stores in the UK and 19 stores in Holland.
The company also said its executive chairman Barry Bester will move to be non-executive chairman with effect from October.
