Sales falls 6% at Home Retail

19th Oct 2011 07:48

Sales and profits are down significantly at Home Retail Group, the company behind Homebase and Argos.Overall sales were down 6% to £2,568m in the half year to the end of August while profit before tax fell 70% to £28m and operating profit was down 72% at £27m.The interim dividend has been left at 4.7p.Across the divisions Argos contributed £1,676m in sales (down 7.5% on 2010), Homebase accounted for £840m (-1.7%) while Financial Services generated £52.2m, broadly flat on the comparative period.The chief executive of Home Retail said of the results:"Core customers at Argos have continued to be under greater pressure and there were ongoing challenging conditions across several product categories, most notably consumer electronics.As we now enter our busiest trading period market conditions remain both weak and volatile, and in these early weeks of the second half we have not seen the improvement in sales that we had anticipated."BS