U.K.'s Carpetright Sales Drop

London, England, April 12, 2007--Britain's biggest carpet retailer Carpetright Plc said trading in the last ten weeks had been more difficult than expected, sending its shares down by 6.2 percent on Thursday.

Like-for-like sales in Britain and Ireland fell 5.2 percent in the last 10 weeks, having declined 2.2 percent in the second half of its financial year. Like-for-like sales had risen by 0.9 percent in the first half to Oct. 28.

"Whilst I am disappointed with our performance since interest rates increased in January, I am confident that Carpetright continues to gain market share," Chairman and Chief Executive Lord Harris of Peckman said in the trading update.

The company, which operates mainly in Britain and Ireland but also has operations in Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland, said second half like-for-like sales in the rest of Europe had increased by 4.2 percent.

Pretax profit, excluding property profits, for the year to April 28 was anticipated to be marginally ahead of last year, the firm said in a statement Property profits would be above last year's level at around 8.5 million pounds ($16.8 million).

The company reported an underlying pretax profit of 56.7 million pounds for the year to April 29, 2006, and analysts at Bridgewell had pencilled in a profit of about 62.7 million for the current year.

"The very weak trend in the last 10 weeks will clearly impact forecasts for 2007/08," Bridgewell's Paul Deacon said in a note.