 have taken a 10 percent hit following a dive in profits. The FTSE 250 firm saw a 14 percent dip in profits,){kind=link}
Shares in Card Factory (LON:CARD) have taken a 10 percent hit following a dive in profits.
The FTSE 250 firm saw a 14 percent dip in profits, blaming a weaker pound and rising wage costs.
“The retailer is right to continue its aggressive expansion; however, with high street footfall declining and online the fastest growing channel in the UK greetings card market over the next five years, Card Factory must invest in its multichannel offer,” said Sarah Johns, retail analyst at GlobalData.
“The retailer continued to grow sales via online during the period, but has some way to go in becoming an established player in the online personalisation card category, with Moonpig.com and WH Smith-owned funkypigeon.com key threats.”
The British greeting card company said profit was hurt by the weaker pound due to half of the annual costs of its goods coming from products priced in U.S. dollars.
Card Factory has said that the full-year profits “reflect a continuation of some of the headwinds identified in the first half.”
Chief executive Karen Hubbard said: “We have delivered a solid set of interim results with strong growth in like-for-like sales and total revenue, despite the decline in footfall seen across the high street; however, profitability over the half year was impacted by foreign exchange, national living wage and some of the important investments we are making in the business for longer term growth,”
“Our business model remains highly cash generative and we are pleased to be announcing another special dividend of 15 pence per share.
“Together with the interim dividend, this means we will have returned £246.5m to shareholders since IPO in May 2014.”
In more market news, WPP and Sage Group were the two biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 index.
The pound rose a small 0.1 percent against the dollar and was 0.4 percent higher against the euro.